A Study On Lawrence Venuti’s Foreignizing Translation Theory From The Perspective Of Ethics Of Difference

Lawrence Venuti is one of the most influential figures in the western translation field. Motivated by translators’ visibility, Venuti puts forward the ethics of difference out of the respect to the cultural differences so as to alter the unequal and imbalanced cross-cultural communications between the strong and the weak cultures. Meanwhile, he expects to practice the ethics of difference by means of foreignizing translation. Venuti’s translation theory has made a significant contribution to the development and improvement of western translation theories and has greatly influenced the domestic translation field. However, Venuti’s translation theory, for its profound and complicated thoughts, is inevitably misinterpreted in the domestic translation field in the process of interpretation and application. Due to the fact that people may easily ignore the value basis of the theory, ethics of difference, the misreadings are particularly reflected in confusing Venuti’s foreignizing translation with the Chinese traditional translation ideas of yihua and literal translation. Thus, studying on Venuti’s foreignizing translation theory, on one hand, is beneficial to rectify the misinterpretation existed at home. On the other hand, this study hopefully can be regarded as a complementary to the relative research.Hong Lou Meng is celebrated as a monumental literary work for its all-embracing cultural coverage of its time. And its form and theme are significantly characterized by the Chinese classic literature. Accordingly, the translations of Hong Lou Meng are undoubtedly valuable and meaningful to the overseas promotion of the other Chinese literary works. In two complete English versions of Hong Lou Meng, Yangs’ version has been widely accepted as a standard of yihua in domestic translation field for its faithfulness to the source text at the level of linguistics, culture and style translation. The exoticism of Hong Lou Meng in form and theme, and the heterogeneous discourse of Yangs’ version bring the foreignizing effects to the English readers. As a result, Yangs’ version of Hong Lou Meng, to some extent, coincides with the connotations of Venuti’s foreignizing translation. The thesis takes the overseas acceptance of Yangs’ version of Hong Lou Meng as an example to analyze the guidance of the ethics of difference to the weak cultural transmission, which is supposed to have some practical significance.The purpose of the thesis is twofold: First of all, by briefly reviewing yihua in China and making an analysis of misinterpretations of Venuti’s foreignizing translation theory, the thesis aims to distinguish Venuti’s foreignizing translation from the concepts of yihua in China and literal translation in order to highlight the nature of Venuti’s foreignizing translation theory, the ethics of difference. Second, by analyzing the acceptance of Yangs’ version of Hong Lou Meng in America, the thesis tries to expose the limitations of Venuti’s foreignizing translation in transmitting the weak culture in the light of the ethics of difference.The conclusions are as follows: Firstly, Venuti’s foreignizing translation can not be regarded as yihua or literal translation, and some interpretations of venuti’s foreignizing translation in domestic seem not to be objective. There are definite links and differences between them. To begin with, strongly appealing to the obligation of signaling the differences of foreign culture in translation, Venuti’s foreignizing translation puts main concern on the ethics of difference, which is not only the value basis but the aim of the theory. Therefore, Venuti’s foreignizing translation can be classified into the ethical domain, while yihua or literal translation to methodology for its focus merely on the the exchange of linguistics and culture. In addition, yihua or literal translation is an effective way to realize foreignizing translation, but absolutely not the unique one. Secondly, as the specific practice of ethics of difference, Venuti’s foreignizing translation theory is found not effective to guide the translation practice of the weak cultural transmission. And it has some limitations in the respects of hyper-foreignizing strategies, small-scaled readership, ineffective resistance to the cultural hegemony as well.