Translation, Manipulation Of Literature, And The Formation Of Cultural Identities

Before 20th century, translation studies had long been attached to the subjects of linguistics or literature studies as a branch or a certain field of them,instead of an independent discipline. Since the 1950s, a variety of linguistic approaches have been applied in translation studies. Holmes proposed "translation studies" in 1972 in Copenhagen, and Lefevere gave translation studies a definition in the Leuven seminar of 1976. André Lefevere, Susan Bassnett regarded translation as rewriting and manipulation, and brought a cultural turn to translation studies, putting translation studies into certain social and historical settings.Translation wields enormous power in constructing representations of foreign cultures, while it simultaneously constructs domestic subjects. Translations can have conservative or transgressive effects. Often the translation is erased by suppressing the linguistic and cultural differences of the foreign text, assimilating it to dominant values in the target-language culture, making it recognizable and therefore seemingly untranslated. Foreignising and domesticating are seen as the two main translation strategies. By examining several translation projects from different periods it is shown how translation forms particular cultural identities and maintains them. After looking into the importance of translation ethics and its influence on the formation of both the foreign and domestic identities, the paper concludes with a consideration of how and why translators could realise non-ethnocentrism translation.