On Lawrence Venuti's Translation Theory

As an important translation theorist and translator, Lawrence Venuti published several books and has greatly promoted the development of translation study. In recent years, translators and translation theorists have become more aware of the importance of cultural communication and transmission and have paid more attention to Venuti's translation theory. This thesis tries to introduce Venuti's translation theory systematically and have a critical analysis of his theory, and takes Yang's English version of Hongloumeng as a case study to explore its value of application in Chinese-English translation.The first chapter of this thesis reviews Venuti's translation theory in detail. (1) Venuti uses the term "invisibility" to describe the translator's situation and activity in contemporary Anglo-American culture. He proposes to make the translator visible and keep the subject status of translation. (2) Venuti tries to discuss the translation strategies by studying their relationship to such determinants as political agendas, historical conditions and cultural canons. He presents his own translation method of "resistancy" in opposition to the dominance of fluent domestication. He advocates foreignizing translation strategy. (3) Venuti's ethics of difference also have great significance to translation study. Venuti borrows the term "remainder" from Lecercle to establish the basis of "Difference Theory". Language remainder exposes that the form of mainstream language is just the production of a certain time and a certain situation and even overthrows the legitimizing status of it. Venuti advocates minoritizing translation to release the language remainder.Chapter two makes a critical analysis of Venuti's translation theory, pointing out its contributions and limitations. The three contributions are: (1) Promoting the translator's social and economic status. (2) Opening up a new perspective to translation studies. (3) Offering the discursive power to non-English languages. The limitations of his theory are that he hasn't paid enough attention to the cultural status of the target language, the target readers and the text types.Chapter three is a case study of Yang's English Version of Hongloumeng by which we can have a better understanding of Lawrence Venuti's translation theory and its value of application in Chinese-English translation. (1) In order to translate this great Chinese classic novel successfully, Yang made full use of his subjectivity and thus the translator is more visible, which we can observe from his selection of the original text, his selection of translation strategy and his manifestation in the translation process. As the subject of translation activity, the translator is impossible to be invisible and the visibility of the translator is only an illusion. (2) Yang adopted foreignizing translation to keep the linguistic and cultural differences and promote the cultural communication between different countries. Under the guidance of foreignization, he mainly adopted transliteration, literal translation, literal translation added with annotation, literal translation added with paraphrase. At the same time, to ensure the target reader's acceptance and understanding, Yang used domestication as the supplement. He adopted free translation, simplification, amplification, substitution and paraphrase. (3) Compared with the western strong cultures, Chinese culture is in a comparatively low status, therefore Hongloumeng is in a marginal position in the world literature system for a long time in the history. So Yang's translation of Hongloumeng to the west is a minoritizing translation and also the voice of the weak culture to resist the hegemony of the strong ones.This thesis does not only study the contributions and limitations of Venuti's theory, but also analyzes its value of application in Chinese -English translation by taking Yang's English version of Hongloumeng as a case study, so that translators can use the theory to guide their translation practice. The purpose of this thesis is to give some guidance and assistance to translation studies and translation practice.