Foreignization and Domestication in Proverb Translation
净风School of Foreign Language, Honghe University Luo Xuan
［Abstract］Proverbs are culture-loaded linguistic symbols. The E-C/C-E proverb translation involves not only the transfer of language but also the transmission of culture. Through analyzing the necessity of employing foreigniztion instead of domestication in proverb translation, the author holds that foreignization should be mainly employed so as to achieve better conveyance of the cultural peculiarities of both English and Chinese proverbs and wherever necessary domestication should be employed in order to facilitate natural and fluent expression, but domestication should not distort the cultural flavor of the original.
［Key words］proverb, culture, domestication, foreignization
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太钢在线倾听1.A Brief Introduction to Proverbs
An English proverb says, “Proverbs are the daughters of daily experience.”Proverbs, existing distinctively and numerously in almost every language, are the panoramic pictures of linguistic and cultural traits of a community. They are an important integrated part of a language and widely recognized as the essence and crystallization of a nation. In content, proverbs are closely connected with history, religion and living condition of a nation.
In form, Proverbs are presented by sentences that cannot be substituted randomly. As a gem of a language and a mirror of linguistic and cultural concepts of a nation, proverbs have been handed down from generation to generation. Without proverbs, a language will lack vitality, vividness and expressiveness. A proverb is defined as“A short well-known saying that states a general truth or gives advices”by Oxford Advanced Learner's English-Chinese Dictionary (2002). The famous Chinese《辞海》(2000) explains tha“t谚语是流传于民间的简练通俗而富于意义的语句。” 2.Definitions of Domestication and Foreignization
脏弹
Domestication and foreignization are two fundamental translation strategies which have been catching people's attention in recent years. Their meanings are richer than“literal translation”and“free translation”.“The conflict between domestication and foreignization as opposite translation strategies can be regarded as the poetic, cultural and political rather than linguistic extension of the time-worn controversy over free translation and literal translation”(Wang, Dongfeng, 2002: 24). Domestication 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 language readers, while foreignization designates the type of translation in which a target text“deliberately breaks target conventions by retaining something of the foreignness of the original”(Shuttleworth&Cowie,1997:59). Domestication is target-language-culture-oriented, while foreignization is source-language-culture- oriented. Venuti, an Italian American translation theorist, defines foreignization as“an ethnodeviant pressure on those values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, sending the readers abroad”, and domestication as“an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to
target-language cultural values, bringing the author of the source language into the target language culture.”( Venuti, 1995:20)
甲苯胺蓝
3.Application of Foreignization and Domestication in Proverb
Translation
3.1 Foreignization: the major strategy for proverb translation
Among all the English and Chinese proverbs, proverbs expressing the same or similar connotative meaning and proverbs indicating unique cultural phenomena only occupy a relative small proportion. Proverbs that express the same or similar connotative meaning with different cultural terms cover a much larger proportion. It is the translation of the last two kinds of proverbs that have aroused heated discussion in the field of translation at home and abroad. Translators usually become hesitant to decide whether he should try to avoid the cultural difference so as to achieve fluent communication or he should strive to admit and accept the cultural disparities in order to retain the foreignness of the alien c
药品不良反应监测系统
ulture. The author of the present thesis is in favor of taking foreignization as the dominating strategy in the E-C/C-E proverb translation. The following discussion will be focused on the necessity of foreignization and the limitations of domestication in proverb translation. Necessity of foreignization in translating proverbs：
耐火
As culture-loaded linguistic symbols, proverbs usually reflect almost every part of the culture of a nation. Proverbs of a nation present to receptors of another nation a unique appeal which, to a large extent, is dependent on their peculiar ways of expressing. Translating proverbs from one language to another, therefore, needs to achieve the effects of conveying the exotic flavors of the source language culture. Foreignization, in the author's opinion, serves better to the conveyance of alien cultures in translating proverbs. Therefore, there is a much greater necessity of employing foreignization than domestication in translating proverbs from Chinese into English or vise versa. This necessity stems from the following three aspects: faithfulness of translation, promotion of cultural exchanges and reader acceptance.
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