Hybridity In The Translation Of Six Chapters Of A Floating Life

One of the important characters of the modern world is globalization. Corresponding to the influence brought about by globalization, extensive communication has been carried out by various countries in terms of economy, culture and so on. The need of communication makes translation inevitable. A detailed and in-depth research on the characteristics of hybridity in translation is carried out in this thesis.Traditional translation theory is of the opinion that translation activity either adopts the domesticating strategy or employs the foreignizing strategy. Translation theorists for thousands of years have carried out heated debates over this topic. At all times, in the rival of domestication and foreignization, the latter seems to have been in the favorable position. In the present world, however, new communication requirement make people rethink about the two translation strategies. In-depth comparison and analysis of the features of domestication and foreignization is made in this thesis, through which we find that the characteristics of domestication is transparent and easy for the readers to understand while the features of foreignization are exotic flavor and obscurity to some extent. So the readers will encounter less foreign factors, therefore, relatively easy to understand and accept the domesticated translations. The foreignizing translation strategy, however, will bring the target language with something of other cultures; consequently, enrich the target language in terms of language and culture.Based on the postcolonial translation theory, this thesis states that all the translations integrate the domesticating and foreignizing translation strategies, i.e., all the translations are hybrid texts; furthermore, the reasonableness and advantage of the hybrid translation strategy is expounded in detail. Compared with the domesticating and foreignizing translation, hybridity can promote the communication of the culture of the source language and the culture of the target language, resist cultural hegemony and promote the optimization of the culture of the target language. By using the"hybrid"translation strategy, both the language and cultural characters of the source language and the target language can be retained to some extent. In the postcolonial context, this provides a way for the preservation of the colonized cultures that are in the weak position. With the hybrid translation strategy, the weak cultures can also impose some influence on the strong cultures and cause the latter to pay attention to other cultures. Consequently, this translation strategy will be helpful for the elimination of cultural hegemony.We advocate the hybrid translation strategy does not mean that hybridity can be used without limit in translation. As a result, this thesis also illustrates that hybridity should be controlled within acceptable scope and conducts an analysis of the factors that may influence the degree of hybridity. These factors are categorized into internal factors and external factors, in which the internal factors include the translator and the type of source text and the external factors include patronage, ideology, professionals, poetics and reader. In the internal factors, the translator has the right to control the degree of hybridity to some extent while the type of source text determines the percentage of the hybrid elements in the translation. In the external factors, the attention of patronage is mainly focused on ideology while the attention of professionals is mostly concentrated on poetics. Of course, readers also pose some influence on the degree of hybridity since all translations share the same purpose of being accepted by the readers.In order to make the viewpoints and arguments of the thesis more forceful and adequate, Six Chapters of A Floating Life translated by Lin Yutang is selected for analyzing. Some examples are chosen and analyzed from the perspectives of language and culture for illustrating the existence of hybridity in translations. To put it specifically, the concrete demonstration of the hybrid translation strategy in language translation is reflected in the translation of words, idioms and proverbs and poems. In cultural translation, the adoption of the hybrid translation strategy is concretely displayed in the translation of taboos and ideological elements. Furthermore, the thesis also takes advantages of specific examples to explain the advantages of hybridity and the factors that may influence the degree of hybridity in Six Chapters of A Floating Life translated by Lin Yutang.