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Cultural Attitude in Translation: an Australian traveler’s crossing trip in China
This essay deals with how the translator handles different cultural orientation of the source text in translation. Cultural orientation refers to cultural attitude which is in accordance with countries. Of course different countries have their own cultures. According to Nida , culture is divided into five aspects, that is, religious culture, ecological culture, linguistic http://www.ukassignment.org/lxszy/ culture, social culture and material culture. In this essay, the source text comes from a travel notes called FROM HERE TO THERE, describing an Australian traveler and his son’s crossing trip in China. Then this essay selects some typical sentences embodied cultural factors, under some relevant theories, to analyze the cultural diversities comparatively, and further analyzing translator’s cultural attitude and strategies in translation.
Keywords: Cultural attitude; Cultural diversity; Translation
1. Introduction
Culture refers to aggregation of material and spiritual wealth created by human beings in the process of social history, including literature, art, science, and so on. As an important part of culture, language is a typical form to express cultural activities, thus language can be regarded as cultural language. Translation is a conversion of two different languages, meanwhile involving cultures’ exchange. Literary works root from some certain cultures, also reflecting the peculiar values, customs and religious. Due to these differences, cultural comparison becomes an indispensable part in the translation process.
In this essay, the source text is select from a travel notes called FROM HERE TO THERE, which describes an Australian traveler and his young boy’s trip. I chose this article for study usage only, without profit-making elements. This story depicts a gorgeous trip, starting from Melbourne, crossing China, and ending in London. The farther is also author of the text, in his story he was at a low tide in his life, that’s why he determined living his jobs, studies, family and friends, taking six months to drive overland. After the wonderful journey, the father’s lost optimistic return, he freed himself again, also closed the relationship with his son.
The literal writing of the author is vivid and full of Australian humor, with some interesting self-mockery among the words and between the lines. From the description, the author’s background, life experience, values, etc., could be conveyed to the readership, which is attractive to the English readers. However, in the translated text, how to precisely convey the relevant information to the Chinese readers is a big challenge.
In this essay I want to address these issues through the comparative research on the original and translated texts of the experts of FROM HERE TO WHERE. The original text is written by the Australian author, while the translated text is my learning task. In my work, typical sentences embodied with Chinese cultural factors are selected to compare with their English versions, to analyze how and in what extent the translator handles with cultural attitude of different countries, thus some meaningful conclusions can be draw.
2. Literature Review
The translation practice is closely associated with the style of the translation work. Different translation works have distinctive linguistic features. Only through the mastering of the linguistic features of both source and target languages and skillful use of these two languages can the translator create the translation work that represents the original style of the source language. Different linguistic features also indicate cultural differences embodied in the work. For instance, concerning the genre of technology articles, the cultural elements embodied in this genre are relatively fewer; therefore, in translating of this genre, the accurate and faithful conveying of the information in the source language into the target language is much more important than the cultural conversion between these two languages. On the contrary, in the works of literary genre, http://www.ukassignment.org/lxszy/ such as novels, poems, prose and so on, culture becomes one of the most important factors in translation. If cultural elements are ignored, the translation work will become a skeleton made up by words and sentences without blood and flesh. In the readers’ eyes, a translation work without culture is thus soulless. Therefore, the excellent translators have to fully consider the handling the cultural differences in different genres in translation practice. In the process of translation, theories and translation strategies are important, guiding the way and method of translation work.
Viewpoints of scholars related to translation theories could become the references when dealing with cultural diversities. Eugene A Nida proposes the famous “dynamic equivalence” translation theory, which is also called “functional equivalence”, establishing a standard for the transformation between the source and target language and reduces the differences. In Nida’s points, translation is the representation of the source language in the most appropriate, natural and equivalent language from the semantic to the stylistic sense; translation is not only the equivalence of word meanings, but also includes the semantic, genre, and stylistic equivalence. The information conveyed in translation includes the superficial lexical meanings as well as the deep natural information. According to Nida, the “dynamic equivalence” consists of the equivalence in four aspects: lexical equivalence; syntactic equivalence; text equivalence; and stylistic equivalence. Among these four aspects, Nida believes that, meaning is the most important, and form is of less importance. The form may very likely conceal the cultural meaning of the source text and hinder the cultural communication. Therefore, in literary translation, based on Nida’s theory, the translator should accurately represent the cultural implications of the source text, taking the four aspects of the dynamic equivalence as the translation principle. According to Nida’s translation theory, the processing of the cultural differences is closely associated with the semantic and stylistic representation of sources language in the target language. Only when the translation work represents the source language’s style and spirit from linguistic form and cultural implications can be regarded as a fine piece of translation.
The other important theories dealing with cultural attitude in translation are domestication and foreignization, which is put forward by Lawrence Venuti in 1995. Lawrence Venuti proposed a concept of “anti-translation”, that is, the translation work should entirely preserve the features of source language in style and form that is “different” from the target language and ignore whether the target readers accept the cultural image of the source language or not. Foreignization theory takes the source language as its basis; as for the translators who support this theory, the purpose of translation is to promote the cultural exchange and make the target readers to understand and accept the culture of the source language. Thus the translator is not required to alter the cultural image of the source language so as to enable the target readers to understand the translation. On the contrary, the translator should “transplant” the culture of the source language into the target language so that the target readers can directly understand and accept the culture of the source language.
The theory that is opposite to foreignization theory is domestication theory, which takes the target language as its basis. Eugene A Nida is also the representative of domestication theory. He believes that, the translation works should be dynamically equivalent, with both expression forms and culture implications being consistent with the target language. For translators who support this theory, both linguistic and cultural obstacles should be eliminated during translation. It is the translator’s responsibility to eliminate the linguistic and cultural obstacles as that the target reader can accept the translation work. In translation practice, foreignization and domestication are two opposite theories. But there is no contradiction between them and both of them can be applied by translators. Through the analysis and comparison of all the factors in translation, the translator can use these two theories to handle the cultural differences in translating so as to achieve different effects. For instance, when the translator wants to introduce the culture of the source language, the foreignization theory can be applied to express the style and form of the source language. On the contrary, when the translator plans to adapt to target reader, the domestication will be the first choice.
Newmark’s semantic and communicative translation theory is based on the three functions of language proposed by German psychologist and functional linguist Karl Buhler and Jacobson, that is, expressive function; informative function; and descriptive function. He also adopted Vygotsky’s ideas on the nature of thinking to distinguish to types of translation. Newmark believed that the early translation theory, that is, the discussion on translation in the pre-linguistic era, ignores the universal relationship between translation and semantic, thinking and language. The way to translate should be determined by the purpose of translation, the readers’ characteristics, and genre of the text. Thus, http://www.ukassignment.org/lxszy/#p#分页标题#e# he proposed the “semantic translation” and communicative translation”. The “semantic translation” means that “ with the permission of the translator’s semantic and syntactic structure, the context meaning of the source language should be represented as accurate as possible”, while the “communicative translation” indicates that “ the effect on the target readers should be as equivalent as possible to the effects of the source text on the source readers”. The former realizes the faith to the original author and the latter emphasizes the faithfulness to the target readers.
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