A Study On Lawrence Venuti's Translation Theory

In either China or the West, translation studies have generally undergone three paradigms: the paradigms of classic interpretation and philology, structuralism and deconstructionism. Growing out of different social or historical backgrounds, they have different orientations, with emphasis laid on different issues. This thesis is set in the framework of"post-colonialism"theory, a strand of"cultural turn"against the deconstructionist context. It aims to justify that translating is a communication of asymmetrical power relations. Thus, it is never done in the vacuum but is affected or even manipulated by extra-textual factors like power, ideology and so on.In order to have a panoramic view of the post-colonial studies of translation, the thesis,by comprehensively using the sociological and ethic knowledge, focuses on studying systematically the theory of Lawrence Venuti, a pioneering figure in this area. The decisive point of Lawrence Venuti's translation theory is his translation ethics—the ethics of difference which aims to signify and preserve the difference of language and culture in the ST. Due to its limitations in practice, it is later modified as ethics of location. Thus, such a kind of ethics requires the foreignization strategy in order to demonstrate the"difference"of the source text. In fact, with the existence of cultural differences, foreignization alone may every now and then lead to a version which severely defies the comprehension of the TT reader, ultimately failing to implement the textual function of the ST. In that sense, foreignization is by no means a panacea. In order to accommodate the TT reader's reception so as to implement the textual function of the TT, the translator sometimes may have no choice but resort to domestication.The whole thesis contains five chapters. In chapter one, the author briefs on the general background of Lawrence Venuti's translation background and states the motivations and significance of writing the thesis. In chapter two, after discussing the development of translation ethics and the necessity of studying it, the author then expounds the core concepts of Venuti's theory. Meanwhile, the author presents Venuti's idea that translation can form the cultural identities, which supposedly constitutes the potential source of scandal. Naturally, such an analysis paves the way for his translation ethics—the ethics of difference. However, the hypothesis of"ethics of difference"does not prove as applicable as it should have been, thus Venuti deconstructs it both theoretically and practically. He later proposes the ethics of location, which can be a way to realizing the ethics of difference and ultimately the goal of demonstrating the difference in translation. Then in chapter three, the author, first of all, introduces the historical development of domestication and criticizes it. Then the author reviews the origin of the foreignization strategy and advocates adopting it in translating. Furthermore, the author elaborates on another contribution of Venuti, the symptomatic reading, which demonstrates the reasonability of the foreignization strategy from a new perspective. Finally, the thesis, by using the examples from A Dream of Red Mansions, illustrate the view that different translation ethics and strategies will produce different translations. Chapter four is the reflections on Venuti's translation theory, including both the contributions and limitations. And in the last chapter, the author comes to the conclusion that translation is always influenced by various extra-textual factors.To sum up, a sketchy picture of Venuti's translation theory has been presented in this thesis, which justifies the involvement of social or cultural factors in translation and thus reflects the purpose of this thesis.