On Strategies In Cross-cultural Translation From Functionalist Perspective

Since the 1970's, translation studies has been done under the cultural background, in China, the number of works on the relationship between culture and translation has been increasing since the 1980's. On the other hand, the study about strategies in cross-cultural translation has been focused on the debate about domestication and foreignization.In fact, this unfruitful debate suggests that it is necessary to find out the underlying decisive factors which result in the application of domestication or foreignization. Those underlying factors are not some subjective suppositions on whether the source culture should be forced into or adapted to the target culture but the purpose of translation, the function or functions of the text, the cultural situations where the target text is received etc. Therefore, functionalism, especially Skopostheorie, which takes those factors into consideration, is feasible and effective in cross-cultural translation.Due to cultural differences between China and the West (mainly developed English-speaking countries), source cultural elements fall into three models of translation: the block model in which the target culture dominates, the go-ahead model in which the source culture dominates and the intermediary model in which the source culture integrates with the target culture. In this case, which translation method is applicable for certain source culture depends on the skopos of the translation, for the end justifies the means.The case study aims at C-E translations of university web profiles out of the reason: against the background of internationalization of higher education, research in C-E translation of university profiles is far from enough.