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1、To Foreignize or To DomesticateAbstract1： Domesticating translation and foreignizing translation are two different translation strategies. The former refers to the translation strategy in which a transparent, fluent style is adopted in order to minimize the strangeness of the foreign text for target
2、 language readers, while the latter designates the type of translation in which a target text deliberately breaks target conventions by retaining something of the foreigness of the original. But what is the translation practice like in China? Do translators tend to use foreignizing methods or domest
3、icating ones? What are the factors that affect their decision making? This paper tries to find answers to the questions by looking into the translation of English metaphors into Chinese. Key words: domesticating translation; foreignizing translation; metaphor; target language reader 1. Introduction
4、Domesticating translation and foreignizing translation are the terms coined by L. Venuti (1995) to describe the two different translation strategies. The former refers to the translation strategy in which a transparent, fluent style is adopted in order to minimize the strangeness of the foreign text
5、 for target language readers, while the latter designates the type of translation in which a target text deliberately breaks target conventions by retaining something of the foreigness of the original (Shuttleworth &Cowie, 1997:59). The roots of the terms can be traced back to the German philosopher
6、 Schleiermachers argument that there are only two different methods of translation, either the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him; or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him (Venuti, 1995: 19-20).
7、The terms foreignization and domestication may be new to the Chinese, but the concepts they carry have been at least for a century at the heart of most translation controversies. Lu Xun (鲁迅) once said that before translating, the translator has to make a decision : either to adapt the original text
8、or to retain as much as possible the foreign flavour of the original text (Xu, in Luo, 1984: 315). But what is the translation practice like in China? Recently I have read two articles which show completely conflicting views on this question. In his article entitled Chinese and Western Thinking On T
9、ranslation, A. Lefevere makes a generalization based on his comparison of Chinese and Western thinking on translation, When Chinese translates texts produced by Others outside its boundaries, it translates these texts in order to replace them, pure and simple. The translations take the place of the
10、original. They function as the original in the culture to the extent that the original disappear behind the translations. (Bassnett & Lefevere, 1998:14) However, Fung and Kiu have drawn quite different conclusions from their investigation of metaphor translation between English and Chinese, Our comp
11、arison of the two sets of data showed that in the case of the English metaphor the image often than not retained, whereas with the Chinese metaphors, substitution is frequently used. . One reason perhaps is that the Chinese audience are more familiar with and receptive to Western culture than the av
12、erage English readers is to Chinese culture. (Fung, 1995) The above conflicting views aroused my interest in finding out whether the Chinese tend to domesticate or to foreignize when they translate a foreign text. In what follows I shall not compare translation by Western and Chinese translators, bu
13、t rather look into the translation of English metaphors into Chinese. 2. What is Metaphor? The Random House Unabridged Dictionary (second addition) defines metaphor as a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a r
14、esemblance. While according to BBC English Dictionary, metaphor is a way of describing something by saying that it is something else which has the qualities that you are trying to describe. Peter Newmark defines metaphor as any figurative expression: the transferred sense of a physical word; the per
15、sonification of an abstraction; the application of a word or collocation to what it does not literally denote, i.e., to describe one thing in terms of another. . Metaphors may be single - viz. one-word - or extended (a collocation, an idiom, a sentence, a proverb, an allegory, a complete imaginative
16、 text (1988b:104). Snell-Hornby rejects Newmarks concept of the one-word metaphor in favour of Weinrichs definition that metaphor is text (1988:56). She believes that a metaphor is a complex of (at least) three dimensions (object, image and sense), reflecting the tension between resemblance and disp
17、arity (1988: 56-57). This paper will follow the idea that metaphor is text which includes an idiom, a sentence, a proverb and an allegory. 3. What has been said about the translation of metaphor? In contrast to the voluminous literature on metaphor in the field of literary criticism and rhetoric, th
18、e translation of metaphor has been largely neglected by translation theorists (Fung, 1995). In his article Can metaphor be translatable?, which is regarded as an initial discussion of the subject, Dagut says, What determines the translatability of a source language metaphor is not its boldness or or
19、iginality, but rather the extent to which the cultural experience and semantic associations on which it draws are shared by speakers of the particular target language (1976). Snell-Hornby takes metaphor translation in the light of the integrated approach. She says that The sense of the metaphor is f
20、requently culture-specific, . Whether a metaphor is translatable (i.e. whether a literal translation could recreate identical dimensions), how difficult it is to translate, how it can be translated and whether it should be translated at all cannot be decided by a set of abstract rules, but must depe
21、nd on the structure and function ofthe particular metaphor within the text concerned . (1988: 56-9) van den Broeck conceives the treatment of metaphors as a functional relevancy to the communicative situation (1981). Mary Fung also considers translating metaphor as a communicative event which is bot
22、h interlingual and intercultural (1995). Different from the semantic, cultural and functional perspectives mentioned above, Newmark holds a more pragmatic approach. Drawing on his practical experience, he proposes several procedures for translating metaphor: (1) Reproducing the same image in the tar
23、get language; (2) Replacing the SL image with another established TL image; (3) Replacing the metaphor by simile; (4) Retaining the metaphor and adding the sense; (5) Converting the metaphor to sense; (6) Omitting the metaphor if it is redundant. Discussions of the subject, especially those written
24、in Chinese, are also pragmatic rather than theoretical. In E-C Translation Coursebook (1980 ) which is the most widely used translation textbook in China, Zhang Peiji (张培基) and his co-compilers summarized three popular methods for translating metaphors: (1) Literal translation (similar to Newmarks f
25、irst procedure); (2) Replacing the SL image with a standard TL image (similar to Newmarks second procedure); (3) Converting the metaphor to sense (Same as Newmarks fifth procedure). Based on the methods suggested by Zhang and his colleagues, Guo Zhuzhang (郭著章) proposes five in A Practical Coursebook in Translation Between English and Chinese (1996, revised edition): (1) Literal translation plus explanation; (2) Literal translation plus meaning; (3) Adapting the metaphor; (4) Using Chinese couplets to render the English metaphor; (5) Replacing the SL image with a TL image.