A Probe Into Venuti's Foreignization And Implications For English-Chinese Translation

The orientation of translation theories is changing from mere linguistic transfer to cultural transfer. Generally speaking, there are two strategies to deal with culture involved in translation, namely, target language (TL) culture-oriented domestication and source language (SL) culture-oriented foreignization. Domestication is considered as the predominant translation strategy in Anglo-American culture, and it leads to the asymmetrical literary relations that exist between this and other cultures. Since domestication serves broader domestic agendas, the other translation strategy--- foreignization--- is adopted to challenge its domination, as well as to signify the cultural and linguistic differences of source language text.This thesis attempts to observe and analyze Venuti's foreignization from several key points involved in his theory, such as invisibility, theoretic basis, purpose of translation, readership and ways of foreignization.By tracing the history of foreignization and analyzing foreignization from several perspectives, this paper comes to the conclusion that Venuti's foreignization has its own contributions to translation studies and limitations. A translator should learn from the contributions which refers to promoting the linguistic and cultural communication and improving the status of translation and translator. However, he should get rid of the limitations of Venuti's foreignization. This thesis also analyzes the limitations of Venuti's foreignization from the aspects of background, statistics which proves the hegemonic status of English, text types, purpose of translation, readership, result and effect of foreignization and theoretic basis. At the same time the thesis provides some solutions to deal with the limitations, especially the limitations in the area of text types, purpose of translation and readership.Therefore, drawing on the useful terms of foreignization, the author suggests when doing English-Chinese translation, a translator should do as much as he can to maintain the foreignness of source language text so that linguistic and cultural communication can be promoted between China and other English-speaking countries. Translator and translation's status can also be improved. It is necessary and possible to maintain the foreignness of the source text.This thesis not only study contributions and limitations of Venuti's foreignizing strategy, but also analyze its value of application in English-Chinese translation so that translators can use the theory to guide their practice.