The Effects Of Culture On Translation Activities

The twentieth century can be characterized as a period that experienced a boom in translation theories. Especially after the World War II, all kinds of translation theories have emerged, and people began to pay more attention on the correlations between culture and translation, and the study of translation has taken the "cultural turn" as Mary Snell-Hornby put it more than two decades ago.In the last several decades, literature on the correlations between culture and translation has grown immensely. However, much of the effort has been confined to the microscopic study of the area. Scholars occupy themselves largely with individual and concrete aspects of translation itself, with things such as comparison between originals and translations or between different versions, techniques to handle culture-specific massages and cultural barriers in translation, and so on. This paper here, from the socio-pragmatic perspective, argues that the national culture plays an important role in the translation activities, or the selection of translation strategies.This dissertation argues that, translation, far from being a purely aesthetic or linguistic act, is closely connected with culture, and it rarely involves a relationship of equality between texts, authors or cultures. Translation, which was traditionally viewed as a balanced dialogue or a noble bridge between cultures, has been used negatively as an inequality of relations between peoples, races, languages and cultures. Translation studies from the cultural perspective bring both a wealth of new information about translation and a whole array of new possibilities of bringing to light true functions of translation. Also, this dissertation systematically discusses another two elements which would have effects on translation: the individual translator's cultural attitudes and the conditions of readers. The study of the translator's cultural attitudes is in fact a process of bringing the importance of translators to full light, and eventually helps to raise the status of both translators and translation.This paper is divided into five chapters. The first chapter outlines the basics oftranslation and culture. The author gives brief but clear introduction to the rise and scope of these two definitions and the theoretical links between them. Chapter two is the major part. The author examines the social elements of the culture which will influence the translation activities, which mainly include: the social status of the culture; the demand of the society, and the political involvement of the society. The discussion of the translators' attitudes and the conditions of readers will be discussed in detail in chapter three and four. A systematic discussion of these factors would be useful in establishing effective strategies for avoiding pitfalls in translation, especially between English and Chinese. Also, by recognizing the importance of culture in shaping the translation activities, the translation studies can be brought into a broader field and the scholars' horizon can be widened when studying the issues from a new perspective.Though culture has no standard definition and has a wide range, these aspects are the most conspicuous and most immediate ones that have influence on translation. Surely the influence is not one-sided but mutual. Cultures, no matter in the East or West, have had obtained benefits from translation as well. While cultures are shaping and modifying the translation activities and the selection of translation strategies, translation is changing the cultures by absorption and imitation.Out of this consideration, the author distributes another chapter to the significance of the role translation plays and the influence it exerts on the development of a culture, on the integration of the source culture and the target culture, on the changes the target culture undergoes following the introduction of the source culture.Finally the concluding remarks shall be: the culture plays an important role in the translation activities, or the selection of translation strategies, and the new perspective to see about the study of translation will broaden our mind, and in such a process, se shall pay more attention to translators and their somewhat creative work.