Foreignization And Transmission Of Chinese Culture In Translation

Throughout the history, there has been a heated debate on cultural translation inthe West as well as in China, among which the controversy over domestication andforeignization remains at the center. After a close study of the previous researches onthis topic, the thesis intends to explore the cultural manipulation on the literarytranslation(Chinese-English) in China by disclosing the factors influencing translators’strategies and thus prove that foreignization is a better choice for today’s C-Etranslation.To achieve this purpose, this thesis tries to apply the Skopos theory of theFunctionalist School to analyze the influence of the translation purpose on translators’choice of translation strategies. And then from a practical perspective, the thesis offers ahistorical survey for the development of the two strategies in China and has proved thatthe choice of the translation strategy is lied on the objective of the translational actionwhich is greatly influenced by the cultural conditioned features of a certain historicalperiod. Later, through the analysis of the situations in today’s China and a case study ofLun Yu and the comparison between its two translated versions in English, the thesisfurther demonstrates the advantages of foreignization over domestication for China’sC-E translation.To further clear the doubt about the feasibility of foreignization in China, thethesis tries to adopt the relevance theory to show that the target-language readers havethe ability to comprehend a foreignizing translation. And finally, by proposing somepractical translation methods that can be used as remedies for the foreignizing strategies,the thesis shows that foreignizing translation can be put into use in C-E translationthrough the exploration and effort of the translators.To conclude, literary works are collections of cultural phenomena and areabundant in cultural information and cultural value. Therefore, in1iterary translation,translators should mainly apply foreignization strategy to transmit cultural information.