A Study On Application Of Domestication And Foreignization In Picture Caption Translation From The Perspective Of Memetics

As China increases communication with foreign countries,cultural exchanges are increasing with each passing day.Picture has been a new vehicle to spread culture at present,and has offered more opportunities to present long Chinese history to all parts of the world.Therefore,the need for translation of picture caption is growing accordingly.However,how exactly the cultural exchanges will achieve remains far from certain,and the translation in this field should also be given full attention and further exploration.Thus,on the basis of memetics,this thesis takes a large number of pictures from the English version of Insights into Chinese Culture as examples,trying to explore the influence of cultural memes on choices of translation strategies in different periods,under the guidance of domestication and foreignization.Domestication and foreignization are two important strategies used in cultural translation.Thesis writer is trying to provide available references for later translation by analyzing application of the two strategies in caption translation in Insights into Chinese Culture.Memetics,as a new theory,is put forward to explore the truth of cultural transmission,and it has a certain explanatory power for domestication and foreignization.This thesis analyses the two strategies employed in Insights into Chinese Culture from the perspective of memetics,and adopts qualitative research and case analysis to make a further exploration of factors that affect the choices of domestication and foreignization.Through analysis of the cases in Insights into Chinese Culture,thesis writer argues that the main purpose of picture caption translation is to ensure readers’ comprehension of core memes in source language.Domestication is a translation strategy that mainly focuses on the readers’ ability to decode source memes.Despite some classic Chinese culture memes have been accepted by foreign readers,most contents are not well known until now.Under such circumstances,translator should try to employ domestication to make the influence on both the source language and translation memes similar.However,foreignization aims at reserving the original memes rather than making more changes.Insights into Chinese Culture is full of splendid Chinese culture and reflects the intelligence of ancient Chinese people,so its translation version can be regarded as a process of the Chinese cultural memes spreading around the world.In an attempt to make foreign readers decode more Chinese cultural memes and to promote cross-cultural contact,translator chooses domestication to deal with the culture-loaded expressions in order to satisfy target readers’ comprehension,reserving the core memes.From the perspective of memetics,translation strategy is also a kind of meme.Therefore,the translation of picture caption in Insights into Chinese Culture guided by domestication and foreignization can be regarded as translation memes to direct the new host in translating action.