Domestication And Foreignization

Domestication and foreignization are widely applied as two major translation strategies. Also, as an academic issue, they are discussed with ardent interest by scholars at home and abroad. As scholars hold different opinions about their application, the author believes that the two strategies are worth studying further.First, this thesis highlights the necessity and significance of this study before it reviews previous major studies on domestication and foreignization. Next, the thesis discusses Venuti's theory of the two strategies and analyses its limitations. According to the author of this thesis, Venuti's opinion that foreignization can be employed to resist culture hegemony does not hold water in all linguistic situations. Through a comparison of the two closely connected pairs of translation strategies, the author maintains that literal translation has a wider scope of application than foreignization, and that domestication is more often applied than liberal translation. Then, the thesis explores how foreignization and domestication are applied in Selected Modern Chinese Essays compiled and rendered into English by Professor Zhang Peiji at lexical, syntactic and textual levels; moreover, from the perspective of the two main strategies, it makes comprehensive analyses of a sampled essay from Zhang's versions. Finally, the author concludes that domestication is much more frequently employed and foreignization functions as a complementary strategy in Zhang's translated works, and that domestication can be reasonably applied as the dominating translation strategy, and foreignization may be effectively used to translate cultural elements, which is especially true of translation of Chinese essays into English.It is sincerely hoped that this thesis will enlighten translators and help them flexibly utilize translation strategies so that they may do better in translation.