Assignment 3
1.Lawrence Venuti advocates “foreignizing”, as against “domesticating” translation (Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The translator’s Invisibility. A history of Translation. London and New York: Routledge). What do you understand by these terms? What are the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach?
In translation practice, foreignization and domestication are two important translation strategies that translators need to consider when approaching the linguistic and cultural difference in source texts. However, these two concepts are mutually exclusive. Foreignization aims to maintain as much as possible the exotic cultural foreignness of the source language, retain the original cultural image in target texts and ‘tell it like …show more content…
With foreignization approach, readers are left with overloaded and unfamiliar terms, thus causing distraction during reading. Besides, some target texts contains cultural elements that arouse negative feeling for target readers. For example, having bacon for breakfast is common in western countries, but it may offend Muslim readers in regards to their religion. It also should not be neglected that the understanding of an alien culture is developed from our own realm of cognition, thus it cannot avoid involving a certain amount of domestication in order to convey the original semantic meaning in the target text.
In conclusion, no translation is the product of absolute foreignzation or domestication, failing to achieve a balance by adopting both strategies may produce a misleading translation. It should be ackowledged that although the two concepts sound contradictory, they can coexist perpetually for a better understanding for target readers and facilitating mutual language and culture …show more content…
In such case, feminist translatohrs have difficulties in dealing with the source text that conflicts their feminist backgorund. It can be texts full of misogyny, of stereotypical women being either sluttish or virgin. Sharon Bell, the African-American female translator of the Translating Slavery anthology said she was utterly speechless when she read the text with her own supposition that recalled her suffering raical discourse in America and she changed the word “savages” applied to the black because it “offended me so much, I could not put down what the setence actually said.” (3) With the proliferation of Western feminism and increasing gender awareness within feminist translators, they should speak up and voice themselves in the translation, to recreate the meaning that can weaken the strong preconception on women in source text while retaining the fiedelity of the original text. Sherry Simon argues that “the fascination of translation is that it poses the central question of ‘equivalence in difference’. More and more in an era reacting against the great hegemonies of identity, we realize that it is difference which interests us today.” (4) This is particularly true as equivalence is
1.Lawrence Venuti advocates “foreignizing”, as against “domesticating” translation (Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The translator’s Invisibility. A history of Translation. London and New York: Routledge). What do you understand by these terms? What are the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach?
In translation practice, foreignization and domestication are two important translation strategies that translators need to consider when approaching the linguistic and cultural difference in source texts. However, these two concepts are mutually exclusive. Foreignization aims to maintain as much as possible the exotic cultural foreignness of the source language, retain the original cultural image in target texts and ‘tell it like …show more content…
With foreignization approach, readers are left with overloaded and unfamiliar terms, thus causing distraction during reading. Besides, some target texts contains cultural elements that arouse negative feeling for target readers. For example, having bacon for breakfast is common in western countries, but it may offend Muslim readers in regards to their religion. It also should not be neglected that the understanding of an alien culture is developed from our own realm of cognition, thus it cannot avoid involving a certain amount of domestication in order to convey the original semantic meaning in the target text.
In conclusion, no translation is the product of absolute foreignzation or domestication, failing to achieve a balance by adopting both strategies may produce a misleading translation. It should be ackowledged that although the two concepts sound contradictory, they can coexist perpetually for a better understanding for target readers and facilitating mutual language and culture …show more content…
In such case, feminist translatohrs have difficulties in dealing with the source text that conflicts their feminist backgorund. It can be texts full of misogyny, of stereotypical women being either sluttish or virgin. Sharon Bell, the African-American female translator of the Translating Slavery anthology said she was utterly speechless when she read the text with her own supposition that recalled her suffering raical discourse in America and she changed the word “savages” applied to the black because it “offended me so much, I could not put down what the setence actually said.” (3) With the proliferation of Western feminism and increasing gender awareness within feminist translators, they should speak up and voice themselves in the translation, to recreate the meaning that can weaken the strong preconception on women in source text while retaining the fiedelity of the original text. Sherry Simon argues that “the fascination of translation is that it poses the central question of ‘equivalence in difference’. More and more in an era reacting against the great hegemonies of identity, we realize that it is difference which interests us today.” (4) This is particularly true as equivalence is