On Translation Strategies Based On Venuti's Resistant Approach Under Postcolonialism

In the 1970's appeared a shift from linguistic to cultural approach inthe West translation studies, the research of which has up to nowextended to such issues as society, politics, and ideology, etc. Under suchan academic background, the Italian-American scholar Lawrence Venutidistinguishes himself by advocating "resistant translation" approachunder the postcolonial context, not simply dealing with the generallinguistic problems, but involving culturally and politically in thetime-worn controversy over foreignization and domestication.This thesis will introduce in Chapter One the origin of the resistanttranslation approach proposed by Lawrence Venuti, as well as its partplayed in the translation studies of post-colonialism anddeconstructionism. It is unanimously agreed that Lawrence Venuti is anadvocate of deconstructionism, based on which his resistant translationapproach is developed. Besides, aiming at the dissolution ofEuro-American cultural hegemony, postcolonial translation theory throwslight on the diversity and difference among all cultures. In this sense,postcolonial translation theory can be appropriately applied to thediscussion on resistant translation approach. In Chapter Two Venuti'sresistant translation theory will be discussed in detail. Venuti employs the term "invisibility" to describe the translator's status in Anglo-Americanculture and demystify the illusory effect of transparency. Tracing back tothe history of translation since the seventeenth century, he maintains thatthe traditional fluent and domesticating translation is a kind ofethnocentric violence and cultural imperialism. What's more, he sets forthforeignizing translation in opposition to the Anglo-American tradition ofdomestication, aiming at developing a theory of translation that restrainsthe ethnocentric violence of the source texts and resists dominanttarget-language cultural values so as to signify the linguistic and culturaldifferences of the foreign text. Based on a tentative analysis of resistanttranslation approach from a postcolonial perspective in previous chapters,the author finds that, if we consider it from a different angle,domestication is also an effective means to resist the hegemonic cultureswhen the translation is done from the hegemonic cultures into the weakcultures, which is not clearly stated by Venuti in his resistant translationapproach: So Chapter Three puts forward the aims and tasks of thetranslators in the third world nations. In order to realize the goal ofresistance against the ethnocentrism and cultural colonization thefollowing strategies are advocated, (1) adopting foreignization whentranslating national works of the third world nations into the languages ofwestern countries; (2) employing domestication when translating westernworks into the third world nations. With the translation of Hong Lou Meng by Yang Xianyi as a case study, this thesis further endeavors inChapter Four to explore the necessity and possibility of foreignization,with a view of shedding light on the translation issues to resist westerncultural hegemony and carry forward the unique and splendid Chineseculture to the world.With the frequent exchange of cultures and quickened process ofglobalization, Venuti's resistant translation approach is very helpful to theChinese translation studies focusing on its cultural and political functions.However, when adopting foreignization as a translation strategy, weshould take into a consideration the particularities of different socialsituations rather than follow them blindly, for this behavior will lead toethnocentrism, racism, cultural narcissism and imperialism.