On Translation Strategies Of Gladys Yang's The Border Town

Domestication and foreignization are translation strategies employed by translators to deal with the two basic problems in translation:linguistic incompatibility and cultural difference.Generally speaking,during the course of translating,the selection of translation strategies is not only determined by a translator's subjective elements,such as his or her translating purpose,cultural attitude and ideological concepts,but also influenced by some objective restrictions,such as the text typology of the original,the historical context and readers' expectations.Therefore, researches on translation strategies of a target text need to be conducted in a historical way,taking its particular subjective and objective elements into account.With the aim of shedding light on how to render Chinese classics and culture,this thesis studies translation strategies that Gladys Yang adopted in translating the culture embodied in The Border Town and makes an exploration on the elements which exert great influences on her adoption of translation strategies.Through simple random sampling and the detailed analysis of material culture,social culture and religious culture,this thesis arrives at a conclusion;that is,foreignization has overwhelming priority over domestication in culture translation in Gladys Yang's translation of The Border Town.Then this thesis makes an attempt to explore the subjective and objective reasons why Gladys Yang employs such translation strategies. First,the author analyzes the subjective elements from Gladys Yang herself in terms of her translation purpose,cultural attitude,and ideological concepts.Gladys Yang respected and admired the Chinese culture from the bottom of her heart.So with the aim of communicating Chinese culture to the West,she mainly adopted foreignization,making the Western readers get a chance to enjoy Chinese flavors and a real China.Second,the author takes the text typology of the original,the historical context and readers' expectations into consideration.In addition to the expressive typology of Bian Cheng,Western readers' expectations to explore Chinese culture and the domestic and overseas situations in the 1980s made Gladys Yang choose foreignization as her major strategy.In spite of some flaws in conveying the cultural information,Gladys Yang sets a good example in skillfully adopting translation strategies to introduce Chinese culture to the West,and especially has great guiding significance in communications between China and the Western world in today's globalization.