The Negative Influences Of "Cultural Differentials" On Translation

Translation has always been the important tool of communication in the cross-cultural exchanges. However, due to the status gap and unequal power relations between different cultures caused by unbalanced political and economic development, the translational exchanges between cultures are not balanced. Privileged cultures, especially Anglo-American cultures become the greatest exporter with relatively much less import in translation. On one hand, through translation underprivileged cultures benefit a lot in terms of scientific, technological and academic development, but on the other hand, their negative influences on underprivileged cultures are also great: the fast expansion of privileged cultures makes underprivileged cultures gradually marginalized, assimilated and fall into an aphasic state in cross-cultural exchanges, thus leading to the dominant position of privileged cultures, especially Anglo-American culture in the world, a status quite unfavorable for the mutual supplement and co-prosperity of all cultures. This imbalance of exchanges through translation attracts more and more attentions from scholars who have started to study such hot topics as translation and cultural hegemony, translation and cultural identity and other related areas.There have been some scholars who once talked about the influence of power differentials between different cultures on translation, but most of them took postcolonial translation theory as their theoretical basis and limited their discussion in the influence from the following three aspects: translation pattern, selection of texts and translation strategies. This research will attempt to contribute to the study of negative influences of the status gap of cultures, which the author refers as"cultural differentials" in this paper, to explore their impacts on translation.This thesis probes into the negative influences of "cultural differentials" on translation from five aspects and explains such influences by applying Foucault's power discourse theory and postcolonial translation theory, and at the same time tries to find out measures to reduce such influence and bridge the cultural gaps.Through the study, the author finally makes a conclusion that "cultural differentials" has really great negative influences on translation, but such influences are not external, and underprivileged cultures can use translation's positive aspects to reduce such influences, bridge cultural gaps and change their current state of being marginalized and assimilated by privileged cultures. To recognize this point is quite helpful for translators to raise their cultural consciousness and take effective measures to reduce the negative influences of "cultural differentials" on translation. What's more, it also helps scholars of translation to better understand the role of power relations in translating activity and the positive as well as negative functions that translation performs in postcolonial context.