Toward A Systemic Strategy For Cultural Transmission In Literary Translation

With the globalization of world economy and culture, literary translation is playing anincreasingly more important role in transmitting cultural information from nation to nation,necessitating the use of more systemic strategies in facilitating the process of culturaltranslation. Naturally, many scholars have studied the strategies for transmitting culture inliterary translation with due achievements, with some realizing that the combined use of moremethods is necessary. Studies so far, however, are still not adequate enough to come up withany dialectal systemic approach. In the light and on the basis of Jia Zhengchuan’s DialecticalSystemic View of Translation and Translation Method, with the mainstream theories andmethods of Foreignization and Domestication as theoretical and methodological resources,and through a systemic methodology integrating theoretical exploration and exemplification,the present study attempts to develop a systemic approach to cultural transmission in literarytranslation through an illumination of its nature and properties and a proposal of a set ofprinciples, methods and procedures of translation.Guided by and based on the Dialectical Systemic View of Translation, using the culturaltheories of Foreignization and Domestication as resources and through an integratedmethodology integrating deduction and exemplification, this study firstly obtains a systemicview of the nature and properties of cultural transmission in literary translation: Culturaltransmission in literary translation is essentially a complex system of artistic cultural form andcontent communication, internally comprising such objective, subjective and instrumentalcomponents as source text, target text, translator, source text writer, target text reader, andmethods of domestication and foreignization in a nonlinear structure, externally occurring inan environment of art and culture, being affected by the environment and performing culturalfunctions in it, temporally exhibiting itself as process of source text comprehension and targettext production, and possessing such properties as dialectical integrity (especially dialecticalequivalence between target and source texts), dialectical openness (especially dialecticalfitness to target text reader), and dialectical dynamicity (especially dialectical continuity between source and target text processes).Based on the Dialectical Systemic View of Translation Method, using the strategies ofForeignization and Domestication as methodological resources, and through a comprehensivemethodology integrating theoretical exploration and exemplification, this study secondlyformulates a systemic set of principles, methods and procedures for cultural transmission inliterary translation in which domestication and foreignization both have a part: The principlesinclude the principle of foregrounding domestication in transmitting cultural form information,and the principle of foregrounding foreignization in transmitting cultural content information.The methods include the dialectical use of various techniques such as literal translation, freetranslation, and literal translation with annotation. The procedures include the dialecticalsystemic comprehension of the cultural elements in the source text and reproduction of thetarget text with selected source cultural elements on the levels of text, sentences and words.This study may hopefully be significant both practically and academically. Practically, itsoutcomes are directly applicable to literary translation and may enhance the quality of culturaltransmission. Academically, the methodology and findings of the study may compensate forthe shortage of systemic philosophical guidance and systemic approaches in culturaltranslation studies.