A Comparative Study Of Lu Xun's And Venuti's Foreignizing Translation Strategy

With the growth of translation studies as a separate discipline, we have witnessed an extraordinary boom in translation research worldwide. The culture approaches to translation studies look at translation from the cultural studies angle, taking translation studies away from purely linguistic analysis, and bringing it into contact with other disciplines. The interdependent relationship between language and culture as well as that between translation and culture has been paid more and more attention.In transferring the cultural messages embedded in a foreign text, domestication and foreignization are very significant notions in influencing a translator's choices concerning the linguistic as well as cultural particularity of the source text. Foreignization and domestication have raised heated debates in the translation academia both at home and abroad. "Domesticating translation" and "foreignizing translation" are the terms coined by Lawrence Venuti (1995) in The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation to describe the two different translation strategies. In China, foreignization translation theory was put forward by Lu Xun as early as in the 1930s in many of his remarks on translation. As two important figures in the field of translation, Lu Xun and Venuti, despite their distance in time and space, share a significant similarity of advocating foreignizing translation strategy.Both of them give priority to foreignizing translation strategy although the socio-cultural background against which their respective foreignizing strategies were put forward and the motivations of their theories differ greatly. Through a comparative study of Lu Xun's and Venuti's foreignizing translation strategy, which is a part of the general comparison between western and Chinese translation theories, conclusions may be drawn that despite the different translation practices in diverse translation tradition, coincident and similar translation principles and theories could be found because translation is a universal activity which could be guided by some underlying, fundamental principles and that these similar translation theories and principles bear some particular socio-cultural characteristics due to the different socio-cultural systems they belong to.Lu Xun's translation theories and practices are widely explored with large quantity of researches available and there are also quite a few treatises and dissertations on Venuti's foreignizing translation strategy, however, there is few research concerning the comparative study of Lu Xun's and Venuti's foreignizing translation strategy available so far. With the increase of cultural communication among countries, foreignizing translation as a strategy to maintain culture diversity in a world of economic globalization will play a crucial part in promoting intercultural communication. Some useful insight might be gained through the comparative analysis of similar translation strategy put forward by scholars from different cultural and social background, which could give some assistance to the development of Chinese translation studies. For example, a miniature of the development of western and Chinese translation tradition can be depicted; the commonness and particularity, abstractness and concreteness detected in different translation practices and theories can be of great help to the establishment of a more comprehensive translation studies system.By adopting a comparative study, this thesis analyzes the similarity and dissimilarity of Lu Xun's and Venuti's foreignizing translation strategies. Thematic comparison is used to compare their similar translation strategies—foreignizing translation strategy, meanwhile, a diachronic comparative study is made to explicate their respective contribution to the development of translation tradition.This thesis falls into five parts. Chapter one is a literature review of previous researches on Lu Xun's and Venuti's translation theories respectively. On the basis of this literature review, the problems in current researches have been found out and the objective of the present study has been put forward.Chapter two focuses on the translation theories put forward by Lu Xun and Lawrence Venuti. Specifically, Lu Xun's translation theories mainly cover the standard, purpose, strategy of translation, retranslation, indirect translation and translation criticism. Venuti's translation theories include the concept of invisibility, the causes of fluent translation, domestication & foreignization and the mainstream & the remainder.Chapter three serves as a brief review of the debates over domesticating and foreignizing translation, including debates in China and in the West.Chapter four makes a comparative study of Lu Xun's and Venuti's foreignizing translation strategy. The first section deals with the similarity of Lu Xun's and Venuti's foreignizing translation strategy, such as their definition of foreignization, levels of foreignizaton, opposition of fluent translation, contribution to the development of vernacular. The different socio-cultural background, motivations of their foreignization, the contribution of their foreignization to the development of translation tradition, the controversy over their strategies, and their different resistancy are discussed in the second section. The last section is similarity but with difference of their foreignization.Chapter five is the conclusion of this research. A concluding remarks as well as limitations of the thesis and suggestions for further study are given in this part.