A Study Of Foreignization In C-E Translation Of Chinese-specific Words From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Translation activities mainly involve translating words. An efficient deal with translation problems at word level is definitely regarded as the prerequisite of a good translation. In the course of development of the human society, numerous splendid words in human vocabulary have been created by culture, which in turn demonstrate cultural uniqueness and diversity.Culture is a perpetual and captivating topic. Being the fantastic, magnificent and inexhaustible fountainhead, culture has bred and cultivated generations of national words. Having undergone constant changes of dynasties and gradual accumulation of civilization, China, this great nation, has grown into a big power in tremendous possession of abundant cultural deposits and salient national features till now. In the booming and sublime global cultural flowerbed, Chinese culture wondrously sparkles with ancient, mysterious and inimitable oriental cultural color, perfectly incarnating the extensiveness and profoundness of Chinese civilization and the ever-lasting charm behind it. Chinese culture is an indispensable part of the world culture. When the East meets the West, to proactively and accurately disseminate the distinctive Chinese culture to western countries deserves to be the top priority of the Chinese people and carries more and more social significance.Language carries the culture. To output the unique Chinese culture in streams of admirable Chinese language is the one and only way, especially those Chinese-specific words, exclusive to the Chinese nation, mirror the particular social cultural phenomena of the Chinese society at all stages, covering the fields of politics, economy, culture, society, art, science and technology, network, education and daily life, and embody the origin and soul of Chinese culture. Nowadays, the ever-changing Chinese society witnesses the non-stop occurrence of massive new Chinese-specific words, which again enrich and enlarge the ancient Chinese language. Thus, to constantly update the Chinese-specific words pool and energetically introduce them to the outside world will be favorable for other cultural communities to gain a deeper knowledge of Chinese culture. When Chinese-specific words are normatively interpreted into English, they will produce a new variant of English, China English, which is the product of integrating English with unique Chinese language and culture and has positive significance to the external dissemination of distinctive Chinese culture. Nevertheless, due to cultural diversity, the untranslatability of language has been perplexing the translators over years. In translating Chinese-specific words into English, equivalents of numerous Chinese-specific words and expressions could not be found in western culture, which turns out to be the intractable problem of the translation circle. As a matter of fact, equivalents of many Chinese-specific words in western culture do not exist at all, if not translated well, cultural exchanges between China and the West will suffer embarrassment, impedance or even stagnation. Consequently, this objective phenomenon strongly demands the translators to actively explore some feasible translation strategies and skills to make up for the lexical gap resulting from cultural gap and ensure the smoothness of cross-cultural communication.In the long term of translation practice, domestication and foreignization have been viewed as two main translation strategies, both of which can realize the translation felicitously in handling the SL texts bearing huge differences with the TL texts, with their own specific characteristics and starting points. In terms of Chinese-specific words, to domesticate or to foreignize, that is a question. Throughout the history of domestic translation, much deliberation over how to translate Chinese-specific words into English, via foreignization or domestication, has been vehemently conducted, since the accuracy and validity of C-E translation of Chinese-specific words would directly affect the impression of the international communities on modern China in aspects of traditional Chinese culture, current affairs and policies, and economic development. Amid the preceding translation studies, domestication has ever taken a dominant position in translating Chinese-specific words into English, which adopts the words and expressions western readers are familiar with to convey the contents of Chinese-specific words and highlights the likeness of the translated texts with English.However, since the reform and opening up, contemporary China has flourished and thrived with economic and military strength gradually ascending to the forefront of the world as well as the soft culture vigorously striding towards the international stage. China is a cultural power and should reestablish its due position in the world’s cultural pattern of the new century. Therefore, foreignization can be one of the efficient ways to faithfully reproduce the Chinese culture and lead western readers to appreciate the beautiful and unique expressions of the Chinese as well as rich and distinctive cultural characteristics. If translators blindly yield to the reception ability of western readers and insist on domestication, the Chinese culture will never go out of the country. Moreover, as the times roll forward, frequent cross-national and cross-cultural exchanges label the present world. To conduct dialogues between countries on an equal footing is intensely appealed, which necessarily becomes the overwhelming cultural development trend of the21st century. Ethnocentrism and sense of cultural superiority should be avoided to an extreme extent and cultural foreignness should be respected in all translation work. In this sense, it is just the foreignization strategy that could assume the great responsibility of efficiently carrying out the unique Chinese culture. When translators creatively foreignize those Chinese-specific words into English, the distinctive culture Chinese-specific words embody and reflect are then faithfully and efficiently introduced to the outside world.In recent years, foreignization has broad research prospects, the common voice for it becomes louder and louder. As more and more translators at home and abroad strongly advocate the application of the foreignization strategy in translating Chinese specific-words into English, readers also appear to increasingly squint towards the foreignized texts. However, debates on the superiority of domestication and foreignization have never ceased. As practice proves, the foreignized versions of many Chinese-specific words are fairly far from being perfect and rational, and need further discussion. Although a large quantity of the relevant studies have been conducted by domestic and western scholars in foreignizing Chinese-specific words into English, the essence of the problem still remain unresolved. What has been mainly discussed by scholars before simply stays the choice level of translation strategies rather than truly disclose how to most efficiently employ the foreignization strategy and whether the translated texts could be well accepted by western readers. Thus, in the thesis, all the arguments and statements will center round the C-E translation of Chinese-specific words. Considering the prevailing tendency where translators at home and abroad prefer employing the foreignization strategy in translation, ground on the pertinent studies conducted by previous scholars, this thesis adopts the method of linking theory with practice to comprehensively and systematically probe into the adoption and application of the foreignization strategy in translating Chinese-specific words into English.In the first place, by describing the relationship of lexical words and culture, the thesis defines Chinese-specific words, analyzes their characteristics and variation, distinguishes their two English variants "China English" and "Chinglish", and discusses their translatability and untranslatability. Then, the thesis reviews the most classical and quintessential functional Skopos theory by elaborating its definition, three rules, translation criteria and types. Furthermore, guided by Skopos theory, the thesis justifies that foreignization should be the major strategy in C-E translation of Chinese-specific words and conducts some classical case studies to further support its superiority. Under the guidance of the foreignization strategy, the thesis also comprehensively, systematically, and efficiently classifies and summarizes the foreignization techniques in translating Chinese-specific words into English through many examples, including transliteration, transliteration plus annotation, literal translation, literal translation plus annotation, and loan translation, with the aim of1) giving an all-sided and elaborate analysis of Chinese-specific words in fields of politics, economy, and culture to promote the better and correct understanding of the international communities towards the unique Chinese culture, and facilitate the internationalization of Chinese culture;2) maximizing the retention of Chinese national characteristics and cultural images to promote the external communication of the unparallel Chinese language and culture and their popularization among the world people;3) throwing more light on future studies pertinent to the adoption and application of strategy in C-E translation of Chinese-specific words. All chosen Chinese-specific words and expressions in the thesis come from the most representative domestic and western newspapers:China Daily and New York Times in2011, and other authoritative books, periodicals, magazines and websites.Finally, a conclusion of the study is drawn that, from the perspective of Skopos theory, foreignization is the major and feasible strategy in translating Chinese-specific words into English, but translators should dialectically view this mainstream translation strategy. In the translation process, only the flexible and subtle application of all foreignization techniques or proper combination of foreignization and domestication strategies can reach the best communicative effects between Chinese and English. In particular, the translation strategy portfolio "transliteration plus annotation" has taken on brighter development prospects by manifesting both Chinese form and connotative cultural meanings. In addition, the thesis strongly states that, in the C-E translation of Chinese-specific words, besides cultural diversity, other factors determining the adoption of strategy such as the purpose of translation, the nature of language and culture, the possibility of equivalents in interlingual translation, the status of source culture in cultural polysystem, etc. must be taken into account.