On Garment Written Language Transaltion In The View Of Reconciling Translation

China has long been a"nation of garment". Our ancestors have created rich garment culture, however, if you read current fashion magazines, you are sure to find that it is the western countries who are leading the world's garment trend and fashion, even"China Chic"(the expression of Chinese traditional elements in garment) is mainly operated by western brands. While our garment export accounts for 24% of the world's garment exports, i.e., one out of four export clothes is"made in China", it is a pity there's no brand of our own can take a 0.5% share of the total garment export. This is a hard fact. The problem lies in our laggard communication rather than in garment quality. People in the clothing industry usually focus on the quality only and neglect the making up of language, and this affects their products going into the international market. Our designers, mostly from art students, are innately weak in their English language ability and thus it is hard for them to understand thoroughly the up-to-date concept and perception heralding the fashion industry, let alone to illustrate their own concept of design precisely in English; in the mean time, people who are engaged in translation are limited in professional-application fields because of lacking professional knowledge. The above elements work together to make the practical difficulties in communication and the weak links in pragmatic translation study."Everyone is responsible for the prosperity of his/her motherland."Mr. Liu Miqing (2005) appeals to Chinese translators to take translation as a task related to the cultural strategy, to carry forward the tradition of late Qing dynasty academic translation and early Ming dynasty science translation and to shift the priority from literature translation to"translation industrialization". While our national power is growing, we shall not forget to spread our excellent culture and gradually break the status of western cultural colonization and cultural hegemony to achieve an equal exchange between the import of foreign culture and export of national culture.With an earnest heart, the author has been diving into garment written language translation, hoping to contribute her share to bringing Chinese garment industry in line with international practice. The existing garment written language translation study remains an unexplored frontier, with research on which scatters in bits of pieces of garment translation in fiction characters. The depth and scope are both far from adequacy, even lack of basic qualitative research on garment written language.Taking the present situation into account, the paper, among other things, offers a complete description of garment written language, followed by the establishment of a rather pragmatic framework of"the Reconciliation Translation Theory"with its operating strategies and constraints for the translator's actions. The theory is enlightened by the philosophic conception of"hehe (meaning growing harmony via reconciliation)"in the twenty first century and is constructed in an introspective research way. It works as a development for"the Harmonious Translation Theory"proposed by Mr. Zheng Hailin. Then, the author employs the Reconciliation Translation Theory to conduct the translation practice of garment written language, meanwhile, to test and verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the theory in practice. In contrast to the conventional way of dealing a topic from a single perspective, the research bases itself upon translatology, and systematically integrates translational elements concerned by showing the true colors of translation as a comprehensive subject. In this way, the author resumes the"Tao"of translation to the contradictions and reconciliations in real life. The scope of the garment written language research ranges from the existing garment translation of fiction characters to the entire garment industry chain, including the translation of the referential words for the three key factors of garment (material, color and style), brand names, fashion headlines, advertising texts, fashion show reports, enterprises'communication texts of foreign exchange, etc., thereby, trying to offer a complete picture of garment written language translation in communication.The main points and findings of the research are as follows:Firstly, through a careful analysis of garment written language, the author finds that it is a commercial advertising language in essence containing relatively more true-to-life information compared to that of a typical advertising language. It has three functions: informative, vocative and aesthetic. It is an effective complementary device to the drawing or picture language in the whole garment communication language system. Its goal is to help the target item express itself more accurate, more specific, more distinctive and more prominent, with a result of drawing more attention from the mass consumers. Its connotation is the description or interpretation of the garment culture and it has the characteristics of being comprehensive, informative, descriptive, figurative, communicative and fashionable. Being a comprehensive language, it involves knowledge from various subjects and has a very complicated interpersonal relation network, thus it needs the guidance of a reconciliation translation theory in its translation practice.Secondly, the author systematically reviews the Harmonious Translation Theory and affirms the translation criterion of"harmony". Nevertheless, the author points out that the flaw of the theory lies in its application relying too much on the perception of the translator and that it is week in the formalized mode for rational analysis.Thirdly, the author tentatively integrates the conception of"reconciliation"into the Harmonious Translation Theory to enrich the connotation basis of the latter. To be specific: 1) Development from"harmony"to"reconciliation"shifts the focus from result to process."Reconciling"is a process of growing based on the creativity of a conscious and voluntary subject. In the light of"reconciling", translation becomes a pleasant activity involving the translator's participation in fostering and creating international cultures."Reconciliation"is the means to reach"harmony", while"harmony"is an ideal relationship which the translator seeks among various factors and elements in text, society, body and mind, culture. 2) Development from"structures"to"living and changing"turns translation study from a closed system to an open one. Structure is static and closed, excluding individuality and diversity whereas reconciliation embodying the concept of"living and changing"allows the integration of diversity and multiple variables. In the view of reconciling translation, translation is a subjective recreation following the innate law of translation and accomplished by the translator's sincere admiration for international culture and human languages, together with his/her heart felt cherishing towards the feelings of both the writer and the reader. Any attempt of cultural hegemony, language superiority view and the irrational operation of the translator is a violation of the reconciling spirit. The Reconciliation Translation Theory holds that the criteria of translation should be open. Any proposed criterion is a concept of"being on the way", signifying an effort or contribution to its perpetual development. The base of translation is a living and changing reconciliation of the original text, the target text and the subject including the author, the translator and the reader. 3) Development from being moderate and proper to"living and changing reconciliation"promotes the connotation of harmony from conformance with the structure of the work to conformance with the nature of translation."Moderation and properness"is the core of the Harmonious Translation Theory while"living and changing reconciliation"is the working principle of the Reconciliation Translation Theory. In the Reconciliation Translation Theory, the essence of reconciliation is the coexistence of diversities. Differences, heterogeneous elements and multiple variables get grown through reconciliation. Intra-lingual translation, inter-lingual translation and intersemiotic translation, including different translation versions of different languages, different ages and by different translators, are variations of a newly-fostered heterogeneous life. The outlook of reconciliation is the integration of both the form and its in-depth structure. Translation is a special variation in the target language. So it is impossible to take identical equivalence or identical effect or complete transfer to serve as a criterion for translation. A preferable way is to use the concept of"correspondence"which is a diversified system focusing on the coordinated equivalence of quality and effect. Such a system allows the making of related parameters to determine the quality grade of the translation. The goal of reconciliation is transcendence, which is coincidently the portrait of the translation process. The statement that the target text may compete with and even partially exceed the original text actually means the translator's compensation efforts to resume the balance in translation by making use of the reciprocity of different languages. The value orientation of reconciliation is to develop the superior and weeding out the inferior. The operating value principle in the realistic aspect to decide the superior or the inferior is fairness, justice and reasonableness and in the transcending aspect is truth, virtue and beauty. Therefore, in the translation practice, the translator should exercise the method of symmetry and conformity with a heart for peace and love to balance factors and elements such as the original text and the target text, the interests of the translation initiator or translator and the reader, translatology and adjacent disciplines to achieve the harmony of co-existence, co-living in peace, co-growing, co-developing and with mutual prosperity. Every translator is encouraged to take part in the construction of the ever-perfecting spiritual home to all human beings. Fourthly, the author traces the origin of the Reconciliation Translation Theory in the eastern and western cultures, as well as in their translation studies. The author points out that the psychological structure of the eastern culture is the unity of man and nature, which advocates man's active creation based on the natural working rules. The working mechanism of reconciliation is"the doctrine of the mean", which specifies itself as properness, harmony in diversity and cultivating one's morality for harmony. The reflection of reconciliation in translation studies is the harmony of"quality"and"effect"in the light of humanism. The psychological structure of the western culture is Ontology (theory of existence), in which the world is an entity-centered harmonious network consisting levels and multi-relations. The working mechanism is"four-cause hypothesis", which maintains that material is the vehicle of form, and form is the regulation on material, the transform between material and form being motivated by the purpose. The reflection of reconciliation in translation studies is the harmony of"effect"and"quality"in the light of purpose. Regardless of the east and the west, the original thought about translation is reconciliation. After a long period of development either in the right direction or in a divergent one, the current situation of translation studies needs to return to the Reconciliation Translation Theory. Both the eastern fuzzy, artistic way of translation which depends much on the translator's experience and the western rational, precise scientific way of translation which lacks adequate humane concerns call for the reconciliation of each other.Fifthly, the author builds up the Reconciliation Translation Model. Facing the reality that translation study is falling loose and marginalized in a pluralistic age, the author points out that the promising future for translation study is the construction and perfection of its own internal harmonious system. It is essential to make clear such matters as the nature, process, main media and factors concerning translation and to find out the operating axis of its internal system and its operating environment. Translation is a multi-prism phenomenon, thus it is difficult to build an omnipotent model to include the various aspects relating to translation. The realistic way is to build a reconciliation translation model, which keeps up with the times, and is of the"mean-adaptation"nature so that it can guide the translation study and practice to a relatively ideal result by optimizing the current translation modes or models. Through the analysis of the prevailing explanations to the nature of translation in current translation research field, the author obtains the core concept cluster in translation which includes"information, symbol, interpretation, text, meaning, correspondence and function". After careful observation, the author concludes that the core concept cluster can be combined together once the key concept of"information"is to be made as a focus and this focus is able to provide a holograph of both the translation study and practice. Then, the author optimizes the Lasswell's 5W model, Bell's translation communication model, Wilbur Schramm's transmission model based on the theory of control, Hall's decoding model, and Lao Tzu's"Taiji"interactive model to build up the Reconciliation Translation Model for the interpretation of translation process and studies. This model, including the reconciling links in communication, reconciling rounds of interactions, reconciling decoding positions, reconciling double-focus circulations and reconciling three-dimension unity, is applicable to the interpretation of translation study and practice. Besides, the newly-built model shows that the translator's selective decision lasts the whole translation study or practice process. Clearly the translator performs the decisive role in the translating. In order to regulate the translator's behaviors, the author employs the framework of Confucian communication rules proposed by Chen Guoming. The rules include humanism, appropriateness, rite, temporal contingencies, spatial contingencies and the first imperceptible beginning of movement. Based on these rules, the author describes how the translator behavior appropriately. As for the operating rules for the Reconciliation Translation Model, the author proposes the"cooperation–relevance–adaptation"translation strategies. Here, cooperation refers to the equal and mutual beneficial coordination between the writer, the translator and the reader; Relevance means that the translator makes some of the original information explicit to an adequate extent which is based on the analysis on such cognitive factors as the knowledge structure, reception capability and expectation of the translation of the target reader. In other words, the translator provides the target reader with optimal context so that the reader can understand the information with their least cognitive effort. Adaptation means the dynamic adjustment to every lingual dimension in terms of context, communication channel and the structural object. The Reconciliation Translation Theory, as the development of the Harmonious Translation Theory, presents the following basic features besides its original ones such as aesthetics, integrity, universality, dialectic and creativity: being dynamic and consistency, openness and fuzziness, heredity and levels, creativity and transcending. The innovative features are as follows: the reconciliation transfer of language value from language relationship to language game reflects the translator's pursuit for truth; the reconciliation of scientific translation and artistic translation reflects the translator's pursuit for excellence; the reconciliation of life style and humane context reflects the translator's pursuit for the beauty in human nature.Sixthly, in the view of the Reconciliation Translation Theory, the author discusses the methods for text analysis in garment written language translation. Considering that it is a live comprehensive language, the author puts it in the background of functionalism, which studies texts grounded on reality. The preferable way to study text analysis is to use"bifocal analyzing lens"method, which pays attention not only to the analysis of structures and languages of the texts, but also to the exploration of the social and cultural aspects of texts. Thereupon, the author looks into the problems relating to the translation units and the levels of translation units in the structural translation, pointing out that translation units could be a word, a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph or the entire text depending on the corresponding function between the source text and the target text. Free switching among different translation units shows the translator's capability in the translation, and proves to be an effective translation skill in practice. However, except invariable translation units, translation format from whatever level is to be finally affirmed by the verification of the whole integrative function. Furthermore, the author looks into Reiss'research on the relationship of text typology and its corresponding translation strategies. The merits of the text typology study is that it gives the translator favorable guidance on the choice of translation strategies with its concise and clear patterns. However, seen carefully, the classification of texts seems to be a bit of being arbitrarily and the classifications are not precise. What is more, Reiss'text typology works only on the special condition when the target text and the original text are of equal functions. Especially, when her method develops into the adoption of the correspondence strategies in the name of"heterofunction", it goes a bit too far. Therefore, the author prefers to take the merits of text typology analysis and combines them with the advantage of structure analysis to conduct a two-dimensional analysis of the garment written language. In the aspect of textual structural analysis, the author adopts the three-dimensional interpretation strategy of Benjamin, i.e. taking the original text as a"living entity", interpreting the conceptual information of the text in the historical context, the visual information of the text in the emotional context, and the aura information of the text in the humane context. As for the interpersonal actions analysis, the author uses the Skopos theory by Reiss, Vermeer, and Nord, and balances the relationship between the original-text-centered orientation and target-reader-centered orientation with the principal of moderation. Based on that, the author discusses the reconciling behaviors in the interpersonal relationship among the group of the initiator, the translator and the reader and the group of the author, the translator and the reader.Seventhly, the author applies the Reconciliation Translation Theory to the translation practice of garment written language. For the theory, this is a process of verification and feedback, since only through practical revision and upgrade can it turn into a feasible and empirical theory. For the translation practice, the translation of referential words of the three key elements for garment, i.e. material, color and style is discussed in the light of the translator's pursuit for truth. These three elements represent three different methods for translating referential words, since material represents entity, color visual effect and style spatial effect. The translation of material referential words is conducted with semantic field theory in linguistics. Due to the limited space of the paper, the author takes the translation of fabric denotative words as an example. The semantic field of denotative words for fabrics is studied in terms of simple set theory. Nine types of translating methods is concluded for translating generic denotative words in hyponymy and species'denotative words in multiple taxonomy and the words in multiple synonymy is found to constitute one word's multiple translating dimensions. Furthermore, nine decorative words categories are classified for fabrics'denotative words and a productive network is constructed for translating fabrics'basic denotative words. The difficulties for translating color referential words lie in its fuzziness. The theory of prototypes and basic-level structures in categorization is used to control effectively the fuzziness of color referential words. The intra-lingual transfer strategies of color referential words are discussed in terms of concept, form and pragmatic use and a sample of inter-language color card of the"red"category is provided. The focus of garment design and style translation is how to transfer the reconciling features of"the name"and its"spatial image". The author finds some peculiar rules for the translation of garment design and style through the analysis of a great number of examples. The phenomenon of"family resemblance"exists in the generic referential words and these words needs to be carefully differentiated in their semantic and pragmatic aspects in order to find suitable corresponding words. The basic garment styles are categorized according to"the standard rule of the dressing people". Generally speaking, the words of generic style in the basic type can find their corresponding equivalents in translation. The variety-type translation belongs to fussy translation and the garment component translation exhibits a tendency of domestication."The time-and-space development rule"is of guiding importance to the diachronic and synchronic garment design translation. Diachronic garment design translation exercises the translation strategy of domestication and foreignization together while the focus of synchronic garment design translation shifts from the integrity to the change of composition modifiers. When doing the composition modifiers translation, one can adopt the metaphor priority translation method and commonsensible fuzzy translation method as well as the concrete translation method for translating cuttings and draperies. The author further does a tentative translation of some typical Chinese garment styles which generates some thinking about the translation of garment style names for the moment. So far as the present situation of garment written language translation is concerned, both direct foreignization and"roundabout foreignization"(i.e. foreignizaton following domestication) are appreciated to the spread of our national garment culture.Eighthly, the Reconciling Translation Theory is applied to the translation practice of Garment brand names and fashion headlines. As a commercial advertising language, it is inevitable to employ figurative means to enhance the"appealing power"of the advertisement. The transfer of artistic effect does not mean the mere transfer of the literal words, but aims at providing the readers with the mood of literal works, thus leaving the translator much room for recreation. The translator needs to transfer to the reader the original information and effect with his/her own values, sensitive feelings and appreciation taste. The creative point for garment brand-name translation lies in the good command of the rule"borrowing power", while that for fashion-headline translation is to make good use of the"novel rule"and"fashion rule".Ninthly, the reconciling translation of garment discourse style is discussed in the light of the translator's pursuit for the beauty in human nature. The humane beauty is reflected in the following three levels: the communication content, translation principles and the delivery of discourse style. The content includes various discourses concerning all the links in the chain of garment industry introduction, namely, the brief introduction of the enterprise, the interpretation of brand concept, the introduction of the leading designers, as well as various ways for introducing or advertising the products, so that the reader can have a thorough understanding of the product. Translation principles reconcile"quality"and"effect", which is balanced and desirable. The delivery of discourse style prefers to adopt register correspondence. Register is an open and dynamic system, full of complexity and the translator's decision makings. Besides, it is quite a fruitful field in terms of research; thereby it can serve as a micro-verification model for the Reconciliation Translation Theory to offer guidance in the discourse translation of the garment written language. Through register analysis, the author finds the field of discourse covers both introductory advertising discourse and descriptive advertising discourse. The mode of discourse is via modern information channel in a non face-to-face situation. The style is of a negotiating tone. The tenor of discourse involves the enterpriser and the consumer, the relationship of whom is cooperative, for both sides cherish the wish for successful communication. Therefore, on the whole scale, the style of the introductory discourse is formal with detailed information, the language of which reads fluent and idiomatic, whereas the descriptive discourse tends to highlight the aesthetic effect through the use of figurative language to illustrate the information. Nevertheless, the style changes with the changes of the content and the function of the discourse. Difference generates a great range of varieties, all depending on the live target cases. Based on the careful analysis of the examples, the translation features of the introductory discourse are the reconciliation of"quality"and"effect"through the cooperative effort for mutual benefits. To be specific, the translation of the brief introduction of the enterprise is to offer a translation version which is clearly logic in meaning, accurate and specific in information, and adjust the Chinese exaggerating tone to the English plain tone; the translation of the interpretation of garment brand conception is to provide detailed information to meet the target reader's knowledge structure and reading habits; the translation of designer introduction is to give the target reader optimal relevance in context. The translation features of the descriptive discourse are also the reconciliation of"quality"and"effect"through cooperation and optimization. To be specific, the translation of the fashion-fostering discourse is to balance the cultural touches with wits, allowing the existence of diversities to show respect for both the national and foreign cultures; the translation of the short advertisement set with pictures is to deliver the"vocative'function by using refined words to highlight the garment style; the translation of the advertisements, in which the written language receives the same attention as that of a drawing or a picture, is to offer the reconciliation of both the form and meaning; finally, the translation of the fashion-show reports is to render the target reader the dynamic effect of the latest garment style.This study is a development to the Harmonious Translation Theory, and also pioneers a new empirical field in the garment written language translation. The study theoretically enriches the connotation of the Harmonious Translation Theory by the establishment of the Reconciliation Translation Theory and thereby increases the interpretation power. The empirical study of the garment written language translation tests and verifies the feasibility of the Reconciliation Translation Theory. In short, this study theoretically presents a dynamic and open conception to develop continuously and perfect perpetually the existing translation theories; empirically the practical study of the garment written language translation sheds light on classroom translation teaching, translation industry and the related intra-lingual communication.