foreignization and domestication in trinh lu's vietnamese translation of life of pi by yann martel = ngoại hóa và nội hóa trong bản dịch cuộc đời của pi

TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I: INTRODUCTION 1 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS AND RATIONALE OF THE STUDY OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY AIMS OF THE STUDY SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY SCOPE OF THE STUDY RESEARCH QUESTION METHODOLOGY DESIGN OF THE STUDY PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND TRANSLATION 1.1.1 Concept of language 1.1.2 Concept of culture 1.1.3 Concept of translation 1.1.4 The relation between language and culture 1.1.5 The relation between translation and culture 1.2 TRANSLATION STRATEGIES 10 1.2.1 Linguistic Dichotomies 11 1.2.2 Cultural Dichotomies 14 1.3 TAXONOMY OF PROCEDURES RELATED TO FOREIGNIZATION AND DOMESTICATION STRATEGIES 17 CHAPTER 2: DATA ANALYSIS 22 2.1 Introduction 22 2.2 Corpus 22 2.3 Design and Theoretical Framework 22 2.4 Procedure 23 2.5 Data Analysis 23 2.5.1 Toponyms 23 2.5.2 Anthronyms 24 2.5.3 Ecology 25 2.5.4 Forms of entertainment 26 2.5.5.Forms of art 26 2.5.6 Local institution 26 2.5.7 Measuring system 27 2.5.8 Religious terminology 27 2.6 Findings and Discussion 27 2.6.1 Manifestations of Foreignization 29 2.6.2 Manifestations of Domestication 29 PART III: CONCLUSION 32 iii 3.1 RECAPITULATION OF MAIN IDEAS 32 3.2 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 33 3.3 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 33 iv List of tables Table 1: Translation of toponyms 24 Table 2: Translation of anthroponyms 24 Table 3: Translation of ecology 25 Table 4: Translation of forms of entertainment 26 Table 5: Translation of forms of art 26 Table 6: Translation of local institution 26 Table 7: Translation of measuring system 27 Table 9: The breakdown of selections by procedure and percentage 28 v List of figures Figure 2: Global breakdown of procedures identified in the research 30 Figure 1: vi Abbreviations CSI: Culture-specific item SL: Source language SC: Source culture ST : Source text TL: Target language TC: Target culture TT: Target text vii PART I: INTRODUCTION Statement of the problems and rationale of the study In the past few decades, translation studies have shifted along with the development of cultural studies Translation is no longer regarded as merely a cross-linguistic activity but translation is considered a cross-cultural communication Cultural diversity, rather than linguistic differences, is believed to produce the most misunderstanding among readers and constitute the most serious problems for translators Thus, one of the focal issues of current translation studies is to explore cultural differences and then decide how to deal with them most appropriately A great number of ethical strategies have been proposed, some of which value the faithful representation of the original and some value communication of meaning Based on his investigation of Western translation history and theories, Lawrence Venuti introduced and described the notions of foreignization and domestication in his book The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation published in 1995 The main difference between Venuti‟s strategies and the others is that domestication and foreignization strategies take into consideration the influence of cultural and ideological factors on translation and consider the influence of translations on the target readers and cultures Indeed, domestication refers to the target-cultureoriented translation which makes a translated product transparent and easy to read For Venuti (1995:20), the domesticating method is "an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to target language cultural values, bringing the author back home." As an opposition to domestication, foreignization is a source-culture-oriented translation which strives to preserve the foreign flavor as much as possible in order to transfer the source language (SL) and source culture (SC) into the target one According to Venuti, foreignization signifies “the difference of the foreign text, yet only by disrupting the cultural codes that prevail in the target language” (ibid) In other words, “cultural codes” of the target language (TL) should be sacrificed in order to make the reader of a translated text feel the taste of foreigness Taking into consideration the fact that literary works may represent cultural terms, Venuti‟s theories on domestication and foreignization can be applied to literary translation which plays an important role in the development of the national literature Literature coming from the English-speaking source cultures may contain various types of cultural terms connoting different aspects (such as place names, foods and drinks, sports and national pastimes, art, legal system, etc) which functions as unique culture-specific items (CSIs) and can be either domesticated or foreignized by a translator After a brief overview of cultural differences in translation, this paper mainly explores foreignization and domestication in dealing with CSIs in the translation of “Life of Pi” by Trịnh Lữ Overall, this product-oriented descriptive translation research is a qualitative attempt to discover the manifestations of foreignization and domestication by analyzing the translation procedures in translating CSIs of the corpus Objectives of the study The focus of the thesis is to explore the notions of foreignisation and domestication and their application through different procedures of translating CSIs In order to estimate the possible dominance of one of the above strategies over the other, the translation “Life of Pi” by Trịnh Lữ with reference to cultural aspects is chosen for analysis The study is an attempt to find out whether translator Trịnh Lữ domesticates or foreignizes English CSIs when translating “Life of Pi” In other words, the main point of analysis is to explore whether translator retains CSIs to preserve the foreign flavor (foreignization) or tries to make the translation transparent and more accessible to target readers (domesticatication) Aims of the study As mentioned earlier, the study aims to identify the signs of domesticating and foreignizing strategies applied in the translation of “Life of Pi” by Trịnh Lữ In general, it is expected that the study would provide translators with some ideas about ways of dealing with CSIs when working on English literary translations Translators may turn to either domestication or foreignization when it comes to translating CSIs As shown in the study (1.3), a variety of translation procedures are available to translators in order to help them either domesticate or foreignize unmatched cultural terms Significance of the study Hopefully, the study of domestication and foreignization in dealing with culture-specific items can provide an overview of the two central concepts in the history of translation theory It is hoped that the findings of the study will contribute to the body of theory of domestication and foreignization in literary translation, and become a reliable source of references for relevant research Scope of the study The notions domestication and foreignization refer translation strategies on various levels such as lexical, syntactic to semantic Within the scope and scale of a minor thesis, the focus is on whether the translator employs domesticating or foreignizing strategies to bridge the lexical gap between SL and TL To achieve this goal, the first chapter of Trịnh Lữ‟s translation “Life of Pi” is selected, read and analyzed for signs of source-language oriented strategies/ domestication and target-language oriented strategies/foreignization Research question Based on the previous studies on domestication and foreignization, the following question is formulated: What are the manifestations of foreignization and domestication in the translation of “Life of Pi” from English into Vietnamese? This study is an attempt to find answer to the question CSIs of ST along with TT are collected and procedures employed by the translator are identified as signs of domestication and foreignization so that proper answer to the above-mentioned question will be provided Methodology The current product-oriented descriptive translation research is a qualitative attempt to describe and analyze cultural translation strategies in the corpus of the research To account for the possible translators‟ procedures in the body of translated text, the novel “Life of Pi” with its Vietnamese translation by Trịnh Lữ is selected To be precise, the first chapter of the book “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel is chosen as the primary ST to be compared closely with it corresponding translated TT made by Trịnh Lữ The following steps and analytical procedures are used in the research: Identifying CSIs in the corpus of the study Comparing CSIs in the ST and their counterparts in the TT: Through a sentenceby -sentence contrasting each source text- target text pair of the corpus of the research and adopting CSIs as the unit of translation After that, instances of CSIs are identified as qualitative evidence The occurrences of CSIs are classified according to the categories proposed by Espindola and Vasconcellos (2006) Analyzing CSIs in terms of translation procedures, as suggested by Kwieciński‟s (2001) Examining the extent to which rendering choices may have led to a foreignised or domesticated translation: After gathering the occurrences in categorized tables, an examination of the extent to which rendering choices may have led to a foreignised or domesticated translation has been conducted, the based on Kwieciński‟s consolidated taxonomy (ibid) Analyzing the extent to which the concepts of foreignisation/domestication may explain the treatment given to the culture-bound terms in both directions In other words, the rendering choices have been located and noted down as qualitative evidence to show either domestication or foreignization in the TT Design of the study The study consists of the following parts: Part one introduces the rationale for the research, the research problem, the aims, the research question of the study, the scope, the method, and the organization of the study Part two is the development of the study This part includes two chapters Chapter one provide critical points of current knowledge, findings as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to domestication and foreignization Chapter two details a comparative analysis of the occurrences of domesticated and foreignized culture-specific items as quantitative and qualitative data It also presents results of the study in which the research question is addressed Part three concludes the study with implications and also points out any limitations of the study as well as suggestions for further research PART II: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: Theoretical background and Literature Review 1.1 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND TRANSLATION The pre-requisite for both the assumption of CSIs as cultural representations and their use as a focus for translation studies here lies in the Sapir-Whorf and Lotman‟s statement that no language can exist unless it is steeped in the context of culture; and no culture can exist which does not have at its centre the structure of natural language (Lotman, 1978:211-32) This integrative view of language and culture entails that the meaning of any linguistic item, CSIs included, be properly understood only with reference to the cultural context enveloping it Since meaning is of particular importance in translation, it follows that translation cannot be fully understood outside a cultural frame of reference It thus seems that a brief account of the basic conceptualization of culture, language, and translation, and their relationships with one another should be in place prior to the unfolding of the research analysis 1.1.1 Concept of language Language, according to Bassnett (2002: 3), is a system of communication used by a particular community or country Language is generally defined as a system of communication of consisting sounds, codes and symbols which is used by people to share knowledge and experience (Kramsch, 1998) Also, language is regarded as a symbol of their social identity “Languages are the best mirror of human cultures, and it is through the vocabulary of human languages that we can discover and identify the culturespecific conceptual configurations of different people of the world” (Wierzbicka, 1992:22) Other scholars assert that language is at the heart of culture and it is a means of communication and through the use of language, human beings can identify themselves ... following question is formulated: What are the manifestations of foreignization and domestication in the translation of ? ?Life of Pi? ?? from English into Vietnamese? This study is an attempt to find... procedures in the body of translated text, the novel ? ?Life of Pi? ?? with its Vietnamese translation by Trịnh Lữ is selected To be precise, the first chapter of the book ? ?Life of Pi? ?? by Yann Martel is chosen... follows (cited in Munday 2002: 5) 1) Intralingual translation/ “rewording”: an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language 2) Interlingual translation/ “translation