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A Study On Domestication & Foreignization In Translating English Humors

Posted on:2011-08-26Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y LvFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360305951548Subject:English Language and Literature
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With the development of language and cultural communication with Western countries, we have more and more chances to get in touch with cultural materials of English speaking countries', including English humors. Translating English humors is one of the ways to be familiar with foreign culture. This paper makes an exploration into the strategies for translating English humors into Chinese from the perspective of domestication and foreiginzaiton and holds the idea that they are both useful for understanding the culture of the English speaking countries and effective for the target readers to get to know the exotic culture. English humor is an important language phenomenon and this paper is also aimed at giving a satisfactory explanation of this phenomenon.Translation of English humors has been attracting much more attention from translators in different schools. Humors reflect the values, feelings and attitudes of the society of the writers in the original text. Broadly speaking, there are two categories of English humors, language-related humors (verbal humors) and culture-related humors (situational humors). The language of humors is vivid, colorful and rich so it is difficult to translate. Anyway, it is relatively easier to understand the language-related humors than the culture-related humors, because the former carries no or less cultural information. Since there are great differences between Chinese and English cultures, the translation of English humors seems to be more difficult for the translators. Language is both the communicating tool of culture and medium of cross-cultural translation. Culture is just like an encyclopedia reflecting the whole society by its special language. Therefore, the barriers in language and culture have brought great difficulties for learning and translating English humors. In the past, people were more concerned with external reasons, in dealing with English humor translation, without taking account of the cultural factors. Therefore, this paper puts its most emphasis on the cultural influences.In order to reproduce the original culture messages, most translators advocate the use of domestication and foreignization in translation English humors. In 1995, Laurence Venuti firstly classified translation into two categories:one is domesticating translation that is target-language-oriented; the other is foreignizing translation that is source-language-oriented. This theory has been widely used for a long time in the translation circle to deal with the cultural obstacles in translation.At the first part of the thesis, the author analyzes the important definitions and the interrelationship of them for translating and understanding English humors, and makes a brief study of the hidden culture in English humors. The author wants to say that the difficulties and obstacles for translating English humors into Chinese are the cultural differences between the two cultures.In the second part of this thesis, the author gives out two categories of translation for solving the cultural differences:domesticating translation and foreignizing translation. With many an example, the author tries to prove the use of domestication and foreigizaiton in translating English humors into Chinese. And the author gives the conclusion that domestication and foreignization are both useful for the study and translation of English humors. They are equally important and can't be isolated in use. A successful English-Chinese translation of humors is the combination of the two strategies. Overemphasis of domestication or foreignization is one-sided and not scientific.
Keywords/Search Tags:Culture, language and cultural communication, humor, cultural differences, domestication, foreignization
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