The Adaptability Of Domestication And Foreignization In Cultural Translation

The thesis is mainly based on the theoretical achievement gained in the fields of culture study, cross-cultural communication study and the study of the relationship between language, culture and translation. Putting the study in the context of research on culture, the author illustrates the relationship between domestication and foreignization, which is the essence and the respective scopes of application. At present there exist four different viewpoints on cultural translation in China: 1 Preference for domestication 2 Preference for foreignization 3 Co-existence of domestication and foreignization 4 Dominance of foreignization with domestication as complement Drawing on inspirations from German functionalist theory represented by Katharina Reiss, Hans Vermeer, and Christiane Nord, the author proposes his own way to settle the paradox of domestication and foreignization. Then from the perspectives of translation purposes, readers, text types, translation conventions and reader reception, further research is made in terms of domestication and foreignization in cultural words translation. The obtained results show that the choice of translation strategies is constrained by many factors in the cultural context. Specifically, domestication and foreignization should make a dynamic adaptation to various translation purposes, readers, text types, translation conventions and reader reception. Domestication and foreignization are of mutual infiltration, mutual inclusion and mutual promotion. The existence of one cannot deny the existence of the other. What a translator has to do is to exert his or her utmost to achieve a balance between these two and to gain facsimile of culture. Its purpose is to guide concrete choice and application of translation method and skills. And we can see that, with the increasing cultural infiltration, cultural fusion and the development of cultural diffusion, it is quite likely for the SL culture-oriented principle to become more and more acceptable. The implications and limitations are also mentioned. The thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter I is a review of translation studies and culture studies. It begins with the definition of culture and that of language and translation, then explores the close...