An Analysis Of Lawrence Venuti's Foreignizing Translation Theories From Deconstructive Perspective

In recent years, deconstructive theory has a great impact on the theories and practice of translation. Deconstruction is a post-structuralism trend of thought which inaugurated in the late 1960s in France. It originates in philosophy but penetrates into every aspect of our social life. It originates in Jacques Derrida, who was often called the"the father of deconstruction". Lawrence Venuti as an important representative, studies and develops this theory in the field of translation, and he published several books on the topic providing many deconstructive theory and strategies .The Italian- American scholar Lawrence Venuti distinguishes himself by advocating"resistant translation"approach under the postcolonial context, not simply dealing with the general linguistic problems, but involving culturally and politically in the time-worn controversy over foreignization and domestication. Both the Chinese and Western translation circles have paid more attention to Venuti's translation theory.In tracing the history of translation, the thesis explains how Venuti formulates his translation theory. Next, this thesis reviews Venuti's translation theory in detail. This thesis observes and analyzes Venuti's foreignization from several key points involved in his theory, such as invisibility, theoretic basis, and purpose of translation, readership and ways of foreignization. By tracing the history of foreignization and analyzing foreignization from several perspectives, this paper comes to the conclusion that Venuti's foreignization has its own contributions to translation studies and limitations. A translator should learn from the contributions which refer to promoting the linguistic and cultural communication and improving the status of translation and translator. However, he should get rid of the limitations of Venuti's foreignization. Meanwhile, the thesis provides some solutions to deal with the limitations, especially the limitations in the area of text types, purpose of translation and readership.The aim of the thesis is to give some assistance to Chinese translation studies by making the critical analysis of Venuti's translation theory. Venuti's foreignizing translation not only resists the domesticating translation, but also promotes the cultural communication and transmission between the two countries by reflecting the foreignness of the source text. It is very helpful to China's translation studies in its cultural function. At the same time, it should be pointed out that Venuti's foreignizing translation, to some degree, extreme. So Chinese translators should pay more critical attention to it. We conclude: with the frequent cultural communication between countries and the globalization process, Venuti's foreignizing translation can promote linguistic and cultural communication and transmission among countries. However, we should inherit it critically because its limitations. When adopting foreignization as a translation strategy, we should take into a consideration the particularities of different social situations rather than follow them blindly, for this behavior will lead to ethnocentrism, racism, cultural narcissism and imperialism.