On The Occurrence And Acceptance Of Cultural Misreading In Translation

Translation is a complex cultural and communicative activity. Culture is the soil that language is rooted for existence, while the language is the carrier of culture. Therefore, as a means of communication between languages, translation is not only the transfer of language information, but the transplantation of cultural information. Leibniz, a famous German philosopher in the 16th century once said:"There are no two identical leaves."Therefore, the difference between cultures is an objective existence, which will inevitably induce misreading between different cultures. The concept of misreading is originally a phenomenon of reading activities. It refers to readers'incorrect understanding or creative interpretation to the source texts which are the objects of their reading activities. Cultural misreading is a phenomenon of readers'misunderstanding to some of the common or uncommon problems in their own culture or other cultures. This thesis is to analyze the occurrence and acceptance of cultural misreading in translation. And the author of this thesis is to mainly discuss such kind of cultural misreading that translators from different cultures may intentionally or unintentionally rewrite the other culture in the process of translation when communicating with each other rather than a simple error or mistake.Traditional translation studies focus mainly on the relationship between the source text and the target text, and faithfulness and equivalence are taken as key criterion. The scholars tend to concentrate their attention on the work itself while paying little attention to the acceptance of readers. This thesis is mainly based on philosophical hermeneutics and reception theory, and more attention is paid to the roles of readers. In the context of culture, cultural misreading emerged as a result of many factors. On one hand, cultural differences, historicity of texts and uncertainty of meanings of texts make the misreading inevitable. On the other hand, cultural misreading is inevitable because of the historicity of understanding. The existence of bias illustrates translation is not a simple copy to the original but the translator's creative treason. It is hard for the translator to fully fuse his immediate horizon with the horizon of the original author, and the phenomenon of cultural filtering can not be avoided. The target readers are not the implied readers of the original, and the existence of horizon of expectations influences the translator's choice of translation strategies. This thesis consists of three parts: the introduction, five chapters and the conclusion.Introduction gives a brief account of cultural misreading, situation of its present study, its causes and great significance. Also, the purpose of this thesis is presented.Chapter one expounds the definition of culture and cultural misreading as well as the classification of cultural misreading, providing a basis for the understanding of the complexity of culture and the objective factors that induce cultural misreading.Chapter Two provides the theoretical foundation of this thesis. By applying some core concepts of hermeneutics and reception theory, this chapter analyzes the possibility of cultural misreading.Chapter Three elaborates the subjective and objective factors that cause cultural misreading. Subjective factors such as the author, the translator and the target readers along with the objective factors such as the cultural discrepancies contribute to cultural misreading.Chapter Four presents a detailed analysis and further exploration of the acceptance of the cultural mistranslations in the target countries from the aspects of the acceptant foundation, individual difference and needs of the target countries. It shifts our focus from the language details to the function of the translated versions in the target countries.Chapter Five analyzes the positive and negative significance of cultural misreading. On one hand, cultural misreading should be avoided because it restrains the cultural exchanges to a certain extent. On the other hand, cultural misreading, as an objective existence, has its positive significance. In the history of literature, misreading brought some unexpected results: it gave rise to certain literary movements or made an author become a pioneer of a certain school of literature. In conclusion, translation, as a cultural activity, should be evaluated in a wide range of cultural backgrounds. Cultural misreading, as an unavoidable phenomenon in translation, should be treated reasonably. Since cultural misreading has significant influences on translation studies, more importance should be attached to it.