Translation Purposes And Strategies

Ever since Lawrence Venuti developed the concepts of domestication and foreignization in 1995,the two strategies have attracted constant attention from translation scholars all over the world.Some debates about them are really fierce, but have resulted in unexpectedly constructiveenlightenment on translation strategy application. In China, similar concepts of guihua and yihuahave also long existed in the history of translation. The author of this thesis intends to discuss theadoption of domestication and foreignization during translation from English into Chinese. Therehave been numerous articles elaborating on this subject in China, which take differentperspectives such as culture, politics, and linguistics. However, this thesis is to discuss it from afunctional perspective.Functionalism discusses translation strategies from a new aspect and advocates the importance oftranslators. It is very useful, therefore, for us to utilize functionalism in discussing the application ofdomestication and foreignization as two strategies.The materials for analysis selected in this thesis are Margaret Mitchel's Gone with the Wind, and the twotranslations are by Mr. Fu Donghua and Mr. Dai Kan, Li Yeguang and Zhuang Yichuan. They are chosenbecause they are representative in the difference of translational purposes and strategies. Other translationsare also referred to as are needed.Through the discussion, the author of this thesis wishes that a relationship be found betweentranslational purposes and strategies, and that proper strategies be applied in each particular caseof translation.The first chapter of the thesis is an introduction to the contents of this thesis. The second chapterelaborates on domestication, foreignization, and functionalism respectively. The third chapter iscase study where the analysis is carried out. A conclusion is reached in the fourth chapter.