Cultranslation And Translating Culture

Language changes with the development of the society. The conduct of translation serves the purpose of cultural exchange. In a broad sense, any translation can be regarded as cultranslation. However, apart from the contribution in cultural exchange, translation also plays an important role in the evolution of the target language. As the translated version will definitely bear the"birth mark"of the original text, it will be tinged with some characteristics of the original language. Besides, the translated versions will exert some influence in an unobvious way; therefore, the target language will be shaped to some extent gradually by the translation. In this connection, the process of cultranslation will be an open system.I Ching is such a magic book that demonstrates the finest wisdom and deepest and broadest cultural heritage of ancient China. Intellects throughout the history have dedicated their understanding and interpretation of this immortal work of art. And so did the translators of all nations. The translation of such a book will be a great challenge for them, not only because of the heterogeneity between the two languages of English and Chinese, but also because of difficulty in understanding. With the ever changing of languages, the interpretation of the source text shall also be an open system. In this sense, there is no such thing as a finalized translation, which predetermines that retranslation is always of necessity so as to cater to the needs of development of the language and culture.In this article, through the comparison of the three English translations of I Ching, it is proved that the cultural interpretation of the text is an open system, and that there is no such thing as"a finalized translation"; therefore, retranslation is always needed in the process of translation."Retranslation", at the same time, makes its due contribution to the development the target language in a delicate way, since the translated work can exert some influence on the target language in a subtle way. In this way, the target language is in a process of enriching itself by absorbing the nutrition from foreign languages and making it its own. Thus the point of this article is advanced: the ideal mode of cultranslation—the model of enrichment, which is also another major contribution translation makes to the...