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On The Application Of Domestication And Foreignization In Translating Lexical Items With Chinese Characteristics

Posted on:2019-03-31Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:X J HanFull Text:PDF
GTID:2405330563995655Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
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There are always a large number of lexical items with Chinese characteristics(short for LICCs)in Chinese leaders' speeches,especially in the translated texts of president Xi Jinping's series speeches.They are produced in political,economic and cultural context in China,which contain Chinese specific connotations and expressions.The translation of LICCs makes the translator's work strenuous and influences the effectiveness and quality of our country's foreign publicity.Domestication and foreignization were developed as two translation strategies by Lawrence Venuti in 1995 in the light of Schleiermacher's lecture “On Different Methods of Translating”(1813).Domestication is that “the translator leaves the author in peace and moves the reader towards him.Foreignization refers to that the translator leaves the reader in peace,as much as possible,and moves the author towards him”(Venuti,2004:19).Since domestication and foreignization were proposed,scholars and translators all had been arguing which one should be applied in translating literary works.This thesis holds the idea that domestication and foreignization are not in the opposite position but applied in concrete situations based on certain constraints.Therefore,this thesis tries to employ the qualitative research method in studying on the application of domestication and foreignization and then discussing constraints of them in translating LICCs in the perspective of cultural translation.Results show that free translation,paraphrase,idiomatic translation and omission translation methods are used under domestication to keep the fluency of the translated text in the TL.Application of free translation can be further divided into two situations: LICCs with figurative meaning is adopted by the original text and parallel Chinese words sharing the similar meaning.Idiomatic translation can be applied in the replacements of expressions and cultural images in the TL.Omission can be used in untranslatable and repeated LICCs.Under foreignization,literal translation and transliteration are applied to keep the flavor of LICCs in the SL.Situations applying literal translation method involve two categories: one is Chinese numeral abbreviations and the other is LICCs sharing the similar or same semantic and syntactic expressions as those in the TL.Transliteration can be applied in names of measures and others with Chinese specific cultural connotations.What's more,this thesis finds that application of domestication or foreignization is not randomly.Constraints of applying domestication and foreignization are concluded as follows: the acceptance of the reader,nature of LICCs and coherence of the target language influence the application of domestication.Type of the text,the author's purposes and nature of LICCs lead the application of foreignization.Generally speaking,foreignization is dominant in translating LICCs in the translated texts of Xi's series speeches and domestication is secondary to meet the deficiency of foreignization in translating those LICCs.This thesis firstly studies on the application of domestication and foreignization and then discusses constraints of applying them in translating LICCs in the translated texts of Xi's series speeches in the perspective of cultural translation.Hope findings in this thesis can offer meaningful guidance to the further translation of LICCs in application of domestication and foreignization.
Keywords/Search Tags:Domestication, foreignization, translation of LICCs, Xi's series speeches
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