The Influence Of Cultural Differences On "Equivalent Effect" And The Translation Strategies Concerned

Translation is the act or process of translating, especially from one language into another. Translation directly faces and deals with language problems.And language and culture are inseparable. Language is an extremely important part of culture, and can not exist without culture; culture is the basis of language, and especially culture is the environment in which language exists and develops; language is the carrier of culture, and culture depends on language for its spreading, inheriting, and developing.Translation is constitutionally and deeply connected with culture. Then what are the influences that culture has upon translation? This is a very big subject, and this thesis only tries to analyze the influence that the huge cultural difference has on translator's achieving the ideal standard of translation, and it also tries to analyze the translation strategies to deal with or solve this problem.The ideal standard of translation is "equivalent effect", according to what Alexander Fraser Tytler says: "I would therefore describe a good translation to be, That in which the merit of the original work is so completely transfused into another language, as to be as distinctly apprehended, and as strongly felt, by a native of the country to which that language belongs, as it is by those who speak the language of the original work."But the huge difference between the two cultures to which the two languages belong often causes great difficulties when a translator tries to achieve the ideal standard of "equivalent effect", and the difficulties sometimes are so huge that in translation activity, it is almost impossible to completely achieve this ideal standard, and what the translator can do is trying his best to get nearer to this standard.There is one important thing that we must keep in mind: the reasons why the source language reader has this or that kind of feelings or emotional reactions when reading the original work are their native cultural knowledge reserves and experience reserves that he has got during the period in which he grows up in his native cultural environment. It is the result of long-time education and edification. This is revelatory and can help us in our effort toget nearer to the ideal standard of translation------"equivalent effect".Through hard work in translation practice and diligent exploration in translation theory, translators have developed two translation strategies to deal with the problems caused by cultural differences. They are foreignizing translation and domesticating translation. From appearance these two translation strategies are against each other, but in fact, both of them have their own advantages, and have their due ranges of usage.When translating texts that are rich in source language cultural characteristics, and when the abundant cultural elements are essential to the characteristics and the main idea of the original work, the strategy of foreignizing translation should be used. Because translation also has the task of communicating culture, and at the same time, explanation notes should be added to help the target language reader have the necessary cultural knowledge in order to correctly understand the translation work, and thus produce the "equivalent effect" on the target language reader. Although perhaps the degree may not be the same as that on the source language reader, the nature should be the same. This is in fact making progress toward the ideal standard of translation.In fact, this means that the translator not only has the task of translating, but also has the task of providing the target language reader with background knowledge of the source language culture.Domesticating translation also has its advantages and its due range of usage. Its advantages are that the translation is easy for the target language reader to read, and this translation strategy can swiftly convey the main ideas and main information of the original work to the target language reader, so when an original work is not rich in its native cultural elements and when these elements are not important to the main ideas or main features of the original work, and when the aim of the translation is to quickly and fluently tell the receptor the main contents and information of the original work, domesticating translation is suitable to use. The types of these texts are propaganda, popular science literature, news reports, advertisements, etc., or the original work is a literary work, but the aim of the translation is to entertain the target language reader, and the receptor only enjoys the plot of the story, and does not take knowing of foreign culture as one of his main purposes in reading (for example, The Story of the Stone translated by David Hawkes). In such cases, the strategy of domesticating translation is a good choice.