Domesticating And Foreignizing Strategies In Literary Translation

Domesticating translation and foreignizing translation are two strategies of translation. The study on translating activities both in China and abroad indicated that domesticating translation has taken dominant position in literary translation although some translators favoured foreignizing translation over domestication now and then. Since The Translator's Invisibility:A History of Translation written by Venuti was published in 1995, a new wave of discussion on translation strategies was raised in China. Each sticks to his own view and therefore opinions differ.It is difficult to translate metaphors and idioms in literary works. The analysis of two English versions of A Dream of Red Mansions showed that both domesticating and foreignizing strategies were adopted in translating the Chinese metaphors and idioms. There are three main conclusions to be drawn from the discussion. (1) The majority of metaphors and idioms were converted to sense. Some of them were reproduced with the same ST images or with standard target language (TL) images. (2) The Yangs were strictly faithful to the original and David Hawkes (and John Minford) took the advantage of their mother language and their version was intelligible to foreign readers; both translators of the two English versions did their best to retain the image of ST. (3) There were more similarities than differences in term of translating strategies.Further analyses indicated that the factors which were considered in selecting strategies of translation include:(1) The aim of the translation:retaining the foreignism in SL or presenting TL smoothly; (2) The intention of a translator: author-oriented or reader-oriented; (3) The attitude of a translator:insisting on going to extremes or sticking to "the doctrine of the mean".