The Purposeful Application Of Domestication In Yang’s Version Of Pygmalion

Domestication is one of translation strategies employed widely by translators intranslation process. In theoretical domain, most scholars are full of enthusiasm aboutdiscussing its advantages and disadvantages. However, they seldom carry out anin-depth study on exploring the nature of domestication. The reasons, as the authorbelieves, why domestication research can not go further is due to the following points.In the first place, it is because cultural turn distorts translation studies. It is indeed thecase that, both the mere study on domestication and the comparative study betweendomestication and foreignization in the field of China’s translation theory can notbreak away from the stereotype of culture. In the second place, there exists theproblem of research orientation. In previous studies, domestication was understood asa strategy served to readers, by which a translated text would be judged acceptablewhen it read more fluently and easily. Thus domestication study was mainlyreader-oriented. The third one which results in the backward of domestication study isdue to the translation theorists’ preference that regards domestication as the oppositeof foreignization study rather than an independent translation strategy. Due to thethree points mentioned above, the studies on domestication were merely restrictedwithin the role it plays in translation rather than explored its nature. The author holdsthat domestication studies should jump out of culture constraint and interferencefrom foreignization studies and veer away from the usual reader-orientedperspective. In other words, an entirely new prospect for domestication studiescan be brought about only when the stereotype pattern formed in the past twentyyears is got rid of.Therefore, the author chose Yang’s version of Pygmalion as the case study.And Yang Xianyi’s translation purpose and the purposeful application ofdomestication would be studied in depth. It is not only because the Yang’s versionis of popularity in China and the original works Pygmalion has a widespread influencein the world but also the purposeful application of domestication strategy in translated text. Through the case study of Mr. Yang Xianyi’s version of Pygmalion, this paperexplores his translation purpose, namely for seeking a qualified translated text, hebrings into play his subjectivity to use domestication strategy. Therefore, in this paperthe author revealed the nature of domestication through the research of thetranslator’s purpose and subjectivity under the perspective of Skopostheorie.