A Further Study On Strategy Choices In Sci-Tech Translation

In sci-tech translation, domestication strategy and foreignization strategy, taking the place of literal translation and free translation, becomes the key pair of terms in translation research which has aroused the interests of translation theorists at home and abroad. Observing closely, it can be found that the opinions of some translation theorists diverge mostly in the choices of domestication and foreignization in the translation process and tend to view the two strategies as an incompatible pair of terms.This study aims at carrying out a further discussion on strategy choices in sci-tech translation, by analyzing the features of sci-tech text on words, sentences and discourse levels and various factors that influence the choices of two strategies, such as translator's role, potential readers and source text style.This thesis analyzes some important characteristics of domestication and foreignization. Combining these characteristics and the purpose of sci-tech translation, domestication should be adopted as the dominant strategy because it can ensure fluency and high degree of understandability, while foreignization strategy could not be eliminated for avoiding the misguidance of information and the loss of cultural elements.Hence, domestication and foreignization are in a dynamic and complementary relation instead of a binary opposite relation. Under this circumstance, hybridity, the combination of domestication and foreignization, is considered as the best way to break the binary oppositions and expound the relationship between the two strategies accurately.Hybridity can integrate the advantages of the two strategies to construct a third space where we need not to worry about either the ambiguity and misguidance of sci-tech information and the loss of exotic features resulting from the over-domestication or the block existing in information conveyance and the loss of national cultural identity resulting from the over-foreignization. Not only could hybridity optimize the target language and culture, but also promote the communication and blend between different languages and cultures.Therefore, by qualitative analysis, on the basis of expounding the reasonability of foreignization and domestication respectively and the manipulation of strategy choices in the process of sci-tech translation, this thesis reaches a conclusion that the necessary result of sci-tech translation should be hybridity with domestication as the dominant strategy and foreignization as supplementary strategy.