The Evolution Of Venuti’s Foreignization In His2^nd Edition

In his second edition The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation, Lawrence Venutireinterpreted some terms related to foreignization, and put forward his fresh viewpoints on translationtheories and reader’s reception. This thesis mainly discusses the development of Venuti’s foreignizingtranslation theory, and cites examples from Chang Eileen’s self-translated version The Golden Cangue asillustration.Since the publication of his first article “The Translator’s Invisibility” in1986, Venuti has beensticking to foreignizing translation, and advocating the improvement of the status of translation. However,in this period of time, his translation ideology gradually changed from being rather radical to inclusive, andhe modified some of his former points of view. Giving consideration to the domestic and foreign researchesinto and criticisms of foreignization, this thesis presents elaboration of the newly added parts in the secondedition, and the introduction of Venuti’s latest discourse of foreignization. This research further analyzesthe development of foreignization by examples from the self-translated version The Golden Cangue.This study indicates that foreignization has been misunderstood in some way. Some scholars believedthat foreignizing translation was to adhere close to the original or that foreignization just meant literaltranslation. They equated foreignization with “nonfluent” translation, and deemed that foreignizationshould stick as much as possible to the source language and culture. However, in the new edition, Venuticlarifies that foreignizing translation can be achieved by producing foreignizing effect with the help ofvarious translation methods. It is an ethical attitude towards translation, and cannot simply be regarded as atranslation strategy; a dissent translator can employ fluent discourse or make use of non-standard language,to question or subvert the values of British and American cultures and their language expressions; Venuticlaims that foreignizing translation is an intensely “localized” activity, which should be implemented in thereceiving culture. Besides, foreignizing translation is not only the code switching of the original interpretedby the translator, but also contains the reconstruction of the target culture, and the way to educate thereaders to read the translation as a literary work in its own right. Thus, foreignization has certain positivesignificance in the opposition to cultural hegemony, the protection of the original culture and the improvement of the status of translators and translation.