Cultural Negative Transfer In Translation

Translation has always been considered to take place only between two different languages. However, with the ever-increasing cooperation and communication between nations, the issue of cross-cultural communication is gaining more and more attention throughout the world by people of all the circles. And through enthusiastic discussions and studies, many people have realized that culture is all-inclusive and that translation, the means of communication, is closely related to culture. Thus, according to cultural studies in translation, we shall raise our perspective to a higher level and transfer the traditional semantic translation to the cultural translation. And it is a fact that the view of studying the translation in a broader cultural context has been acknowledged by more and more translators. In view of the new tendency in translation field, the cultural negative transfer in translation will be discussed in this thesis.According to the theory of "preunderstanding" contributed by hermenutics(including fore-having, fore-sight and fore-conception), the psychological term "transfer" is transplanted into translation theory, which is used to study the cultural negative transfer. As the existence of cultural differences, translators will easily "transfer" their own native cultural modes to the target culture when translating the culture-specific elements. This kind of " cultural negative transfer" will result in misinterpreting.This thesis attempts to make an analysis of the definition, origin, restrictive mechanism and classifications of cultural negative transfer as well as its influence on translation at clifferent levels. Some efficient ways are put forward to reduce this negative effect. For the reason that translation and culture are mutually influenced, the backward transfer of translation to culture is also discussed in the thesis so as to provide some enlightenment for the future study on the interaction of translation and culture.Structurally, the paper consists of four chapters: in introduction, the author mainly introduces the limitedness of the traditional translation theoriesand the emergence of cultural translation theories. The topic of the thesis as well as its research values is also presented. Chapter one deals with the definition, classification and the origins of the cultural negative transfer. The origins of cultural negative transfer are analyzed from two aspects: objective factors and subjective factors. And according to the division of culture, the cultural negative transfer can be roughly divided into two kinds: surface-structure transfer and deep-structure transfer. In chapter two, a lot of examples are given to show how cultural differences make negative transfer to translation. Surface-structure transfer mainly manifests at the level of linguistics. The deep-structure transfer mainly relates to the deep-structure of culture-aesthetic preferences, political ideology, religious beliefs and ethical values etc. In addition, from the angle of pragmatics, the pragmatic failures caused by the cultural negative transfer are concerned. In chapter three, some strategies and methods are suggested to reduce the negative transfer, and the criterion of "cultural facsimile" is put forward. Guided by this general principle, the strategy of foreignization should be prior to domestication is suggested, and some effective methods such as literal translation, literal translation plus explanation and free translation etc are cited as to overcome the problems of cultural negative transfer to some extent. Chapter four demonstrates that the transfer of translation to culture. Culture manipulates the process of translation while translation influences culture. Generally speaking, translation does great good to cultural communication and cultural prosperity. Anyhow, misreading and misinterpreting may cause some conflicts of the two cultures. In conclusion, the author emphasizes that the effect of cultural negative transfer in translation cannot be overstated. And with the co-efforts of the translators, we...