Choice Of Approaches In Translation: A Cultural Perspective

This paper centers on the choice of approaches in the translation of culture-branded languages and is divided into five chapters.Chapter I introduces the motive of the author to write the paper and the outline of the paper.Chapter n presents a literature review on development of translation study. Emphasis is given to the awareness of cultural elements in translation. An analysis follows to weave culture into language.Chapter III focuses on two areas. One is discussion on cultural discrepancies commonly encountered in translation between the two languages of Chinese and English. The other area is the introduction on two approaches to translation of culture-branded languages, namely, domestication and foreignization. When they are linked together, a question pops up: what are the variables in between to determine whether a cultural discrepancy is to be domesticated or foreignized? From the examples discussed, the author sorts out the variables of the text function, the translator and the target text reader as focus of further study.Chapter IV delves into details of each variable. First, the author divides the text functions into the informative text, the expressive text, the operative text and the phatic text and links each text function to a commonly used cultural approach of translation. Next the author introduces documentary translation and instrumental translation decided by the translator's purpose. The author uses a special section to distinguish real foreignization and fake foreignization due to incompetence of the translator. Finally, the author judges the role of the reader group in the choice of approaches. Theory from functionalist school is adopted in this chapter. The author ventures to link the theory with culture and uses examples to clarify her argument.Chapter V is the conclusion part. The author manages to draw a model at the end of the paper. Cultural discrepancy requires different translation approaches. The two major approaches are mainly decided by the translator's focus of attention-either on text function, on translator's purpose or on target text reader's acceptability.The author hopes this paper is helpful in overcoming difficulties brought by cultural discrepancies in translation practice.