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Cultural Differences And Translation Strategies

Posted on:2004-01-15Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:X B YeFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360092486499Subject:English Language and Literature
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Since the 1970s, in the Western translation circle, the emphasis on the linguistic transfer has been shifted to the emphasis on the cultural representation. But only in the past ten years have remarkable achievements been made in China's translation arena. People have been engaged in translation studies from a cross-cultural perspective. This dissertation tries to illustrate how we perform the translationstrategies in the cultural context.This dissertation covers three main parts: Chinese-Western cultural differences, equivalence and untranslatability, and translation strategies in the cultural context. To translators, the greatest difficulty comes from cultural differences. Translation is considered a cultural communication whose purpose is to transplant or reconstructthe source culture. Therefore, in translation the principle of "preserving differences while seeking the common ground" should be practised.The author compares Chinese and Western cultures in six areas. Then he explores such theoretically central issues as equivalence and untranslatability. Equivalence does not mean sameness, but can only be understood on the basis of degrees of closeness. Translatability is not completely absolute, whereas untranslatability is just temporary, relative even on the cultural level. Having made a brief study of the historical disputes over free translation and literal translation in China, of the current controversy over domestication and foreignization, the author puts forward the coping strategy of "foreignization first, domestication second" after analyzing the political, moral and cultural factors affecting the selection of the translation strategies and further emphasizes the performance of domestication and foreignization in practice.Finally the dissertation comes to the conclusion that foreignization and domestication are indispensable and mutually complementary with the former functioning as the primary mainly on the cultural level and the latter as the secondary mostly on the linguistic level, for the nature of translation is just cultural communication. Foreignization is an unavoidable trend in future Chinese literary translation.
Keywords/Search Tags:culture, difference, strategy, foreignization, domestication
PDF Full Text Request
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