Translation Of Heterogeneous Cultural Elements In Novels Under The Guidance Of Negative Analysis Theor

The translation of foreign cultural contents is critical to the translation of novels.Antoine Berman,a prestigious contemporary French translation theorist,proposes the negative analytic theory and summarizes twelve deformation tendencies which often appear in the translation of novels.His theory aims to avoid the homogenization of the translation text and render the foreign cultural features through avoiding these tendencies.This research chooses and translates the first chapter of the Canadian author Shelia Watson’s modernist novel The Double Hook,and then analyzes the translation of foreign cultural contents in the text under the aid of Berman’s negative analytic theory.The result reveals that six deformation tendencies are the most typical ones in the Chinese translation,i.e.,qualitative impoverishment,ennoblement,rationalization,clarification,destruction of rhythms and destruction of underlying networks of signification.The first two often appear at the lexical level;the middle two are often seen at the sentential level;the last two are typical at the discoursal level.Then the translation is revised in the theoretical view of negative analytic theory.This research tries to avoid qualitative impoverishment and ennoblement at the lexical level,rationalization and clarification at the sentential level and the destruction of rhythms and destruction of underlying networks of signification at the discoursal level,and thus the foreign cultural features such as the language style of the source text and the ambiguity can be rendered.As indicated by the present research results,in the process of the translation of novels,qualitative impoverishment and ennoblement likely appear at the lexical level;rationalization and clarification likely appear at sentential level;and destruction of rhythms and destruction of underlying networks of signification at the discoursal level.These deformation tendencies can damage the foreign cultural features to a certain degree,so special attention should be paid to them when it comes to the translation of novels.Due to the limits of the chosen text,this research cannot involve all the deformation tendencies in the negative analytic theory.It is hoped that more researchers can focus on the other six deformation tendencies.