Foreignization On The Syntactical Level In Literary Translation In China

The long history of the controversy between the translation strategies domestication and foreignization in the field of translation theory can be traced back to the first century B.C.in the west and the East Han Dynasty in China.Although the controversy at that time,to be exact, is mainly focused on free translation and literal translation,which are not absolutely equal to domestication and foreignization,the two pairs indeed have comprehensive relations.The concepts of domestication and foreignization were not put forward until the end of the 20^th century,in The Translator's Invisibility,written by Lawrence Venuti,who not only identified the two concepts,but also advocated the foreignizing method in modern translation.During the nearly two thousand years of translation history of China,the domesticating method has occupied a leading position for almost all the time.In the early years of the 20^th century,Lu Xun claimed his favor for "literal translation",but the idea of foreignization has not been paid enough attention until the publication of Liu Yingkai's "Domestication—the Wrong Way of Translation".Then in 2002,Mr.Sun Zhili issued a thesis "Literary Translation in China:from Domestication to Foreignization",which regarded foreignization as the main translation strategy in literary translation in the 21^st century.After that,foreignization has been more and more popular both in translation theory and practice.Nowadays,most scholars agree that the translator should use the foreignizing stratery in transferring the cultural connotations from the source language to the target language,but as for linguistic aspect,the domesticating strategy is still prior to the other one. But that may not be true.This thesis,taking English-Chinese literary translation as the objectivity of the research,is trying to prove the necessity and reality of foreignization on the syntactical level in literary translation in China.The thesis first reviews the concepts and debates about domestication and foreignization both abroad and in China.Then foreignization in literary translation in China is proved after the analysis of the objective and subjective factors and the review of the translation history in China.This phenomenon is reflected not only in cultural connotation,but also in the syntax of a text.Many scholars agree to the former but not the latter.Since the cultural connotation is embodied in the text and any kind of text is made up of sentences,the syntax can of course reflect the cultural connotation in some way.Thus if the translation of literary works is a foreignized one,the syntax of the translation should be foreignized,too.After the viewpoint has been proved theoretically,it is verified by examples.The thesis takes the two Chinese versions, translated by Fu Donghua and Chen Liangting et al respectively,of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind as a case study.As Fu Donghua's translation was finished in about 1940,and Chen Liangting's in 1990, more than fifty years later,they can actually be regarded as the examples to prove the view of this thesis.The thesis at last draws the conclusion that foreignization on the syntactical level does exist in literary translation in China.But this does not mean that the domestication will not be adopted absolutely.What has been discussed in this thesis is which one of the two strategies will be more favored in literary translation in modern China.