Foreignizing Translation Bridging Cultural Gaps

The term"foreignizing translation"has been debated for a long time and is being debated. However, many of the views, both at home and abroad are sporadic. In China, many scholars, Lu Xun, for instance, have made some attempts to elaborate on this method of translation in accordance with their respective practice and understanding of translation. In the western world, many writers, such as Antoine Berman, Friedrich Schleiermacher, to name only a few, are proponents of this strategy.The rationale this thesis will base upon is the theory of foreignizing translation, introduced and advocated by Lawrence Venuti. For Venuti,"But foreignizing translation is also an attempt to recognize and allow those differences to shape cultural discourses in the target language."(2004b:146)The focal point of this paper is that foreignizing translation bridges cultural gaps. The thesis is an attempt to testify the theme with the exploration of Lin Yutang's strategy in his translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life.At the same time a comparison between foreignizing translation and domesticating translation is made to emphasize the advantages of foreignizing translation in bridging cultural gaps. Domesticating translation can only offer the source cultural images in the domestic manner, that is to say, the product is nothing but a product similar to something in the target culture. The cultural image is not authentic and not helpful for the source culture to go into the international arena in the course of globalization.The purpose of this thesis is to prove that foreignizing translation can play the role of bridging cultural gaps.