The importance of literary translation of culture.doc

the importance of literary translation of cultureintroductionwith the development of science and technology, globalization is no longer a new word to us. its agreed that the world has become a global village and thus the communication has become more and more often and extensive.in order to communicate, we have to learn the culture of the target language (tl). and in this sense, translation plays a rather important role in bridging the national thought, politics, economy, art and so on. in recent years, the importance of culture in translation has been realized and accepted. the social semiotics school, whose representative is nida, holds that many social and cultural factors may affect the transmission of the message, therefore, the translators should not only be careful about the words but also the cultural context. the culture school of translation holds that the basic unit of translation is not word, sentence, or even text, but culture, the purpose of translation is to make the translated text performs in the target culture as the same function as it does in the source culture. obviously,literary translation, as a quite important branch of translation, is inseparable with culture. as robert scholes said that every literary unit from the individual sentence to the whole order of words can be seen in relation to the concept of system. particularly, we can look at individual works, literary genres, and the whole of literature as related systems and literature as a system within the larger system of human culture. literary translation is both of scientific (objective and faithful) and aesthetic (dynamic and creative). as the close relationship between culture and literature, the translator must be familiar with both the sl and the tl and their cultures. when translating, the translator should keep the source culture as much as possible and try to explain as clearly as possible. this means the translator must be careful about the translation strategies. there are always disputes over whether domestication or foreignization should be appropriate. the famous translator, sun zhili thought that literary translation should be a combination of domestication at the pure linguistic level and foreignization at the cultural level. the author of this thesis agrees with his view and holds that only when the translator does so,then the culture can be understood by the target readers.chapter one cultural context in translation1.1 the definition and classification of context context, defined by the advanced learners english-chinese dictionary, is “the words that come just before and after a word, phrase or statement and help you to understand its meaning”. websters dictionary defines context as “the whole situation, the background or the environment relevant to a particular event, personality, creation, etc”. so from these two definitions, we can see just as sperber and wilson (2001:3-4) suggest that “the context does more than filter out inappropriate interpretations, it provides premises without which the implicature cannot be inferred at all”.the importance of context when translating is realized by anthropologist bronslaw malinowski(andre lefever，2001). he felt the necessary to provide information not only about the situation in which the texts appeared, but also about the wider context, the total cultural background. to describe these different layers of context, he used the terms context of situation and context of culture. in 1933, when the american linguist leonard bloomfield published “language”, context began to receive more attention. he put forward that the meaning depends on the entire life history of the speaker and the hearer. in 1957, j.r.firth gave context a more comprehensive description. he maintained that the study of meaning should be viewed in terms of function in context. in other words, the meaning of utterance has to do with what the utterance is intended to achieve, rather than merely the sense of individual words. and he further developed it to include all the influential factors and classified them into linguistic context, cultural context and situational context. in addition to western linguists views on context, chinese scholars have also managed the issue of context. zhang zhizhong(1982)classified context into the actual linguistic context and the extra-linguistic context. context of culture falls into the category of extra-linguistic context which is the focus of this research.1.2 the definition and elements of cultural context there are numerous definitions of culture by the scholars. according to qi yucun, culture has the broad and narrow meanings. in language, culture and comparison, he makes an explicit summary of them: the culture in broad meaning refers to the adding of the material and the spiritual wealth created in the course of the social and historical practice. and the culture in the narrow meaning means the social ideology and the systems and organizations accordingly, sometimes it means the spiritual wealth of education, science, literature and art, to distinguish from the knowledge and infrastructure of politics, economy and military.( wang zhikui, 2001:57)according to him ,culture in broad meaning includes three categories:(a) material culture: buildings, clothes, food, tools and so on;(b) systems and customs: including the systems, laws, the infrastructure and the customs accordingly;(c) spiritual culture: value, way of thinking, religions and the achievements and the products of science, literature and philosophy. peter newmark defines culture as the way of life and its manifestations that are peculiar to a community that uses a particular language as its means of expression adopting nida, peter newmark categories culture as follows:(a) ecologyflora, fauna, wind, plains, hills(b) material culture(a) food(b) clothes(c) houses and towns(d) transport(c) social culture-work and leisure(d) organizations, customs, activities, procedures, concepts(a) political and administrative(b) religious(c) artistic(e) gestures and habits from these definitions, it can be inferred that culture is peculiar to the people concerned and varies from people to people. in the field of translation, culture is not understood in the narrow sense of mans advanced intellectual development as reflected in arts, literature and so on, but in the broad sense, it refers to all socially conditioned aspects of human life including material developments, institutional systems, conceptual features and so on. the thing people say and do, their social arrangements and events are products or by-products of their culture as they apply the culture to the task of perceiving and dealing with their circumstances. thus these things, social arrangements and events are material representations of the cultural forms or models. language records these material representations and is thus loaded with culture.chapter two literary translation2.1 the definition of translation to learn about literary translation, first of all, lets look at some definitions of translation. peter newmark says, translation is rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text. the famous english writer, sammual johnson, holds that to translate is to change into another language, retaining as much of the sense as one can. zhang peiji (1988:1) defines translation as a linguistic activity using one language to express the content of another language correctly. from the above, we can see that translation is just a kind of activity that reconstructs the source language (sl). now lets look at some new definitions again. translation is a kind of cultural activity using one language to express the meaning of another language.(wang kefei , 1997:2)translation is the cross-culture and cross-language communication.( liao guoqiang, 2006:90) translation has been instrumental in transmitting culture, sometimes under unequal conditions responsible for distorted and biased translations, ever since countries and languages have been in contact with each other. (peter newmark, 2001:96) nowadays it is agreed that translation is a cross-cultural activity. translation problem is also a cultural issue, as it involves the interaction and comparison between two cultures. and since globalization makes our world a global village, translation has played a more important role in transmitting culture. wang ping holds that the growing importance of translation in our age of globalization calls for a switch from a single linguistics-oriented definition of this practice to a plurality of culturally inspired definitionsthe study of translation as a means of communication should break out of the confines of language and enter a broader cross-cultural context, so as to draw from researches in other fields of the humanities and social sciences. (liao guoqiang,2006, 4:90) in 1988, mary snell-hornbybook translation studies: towards an integrated approach came into being, in which she no longer defines translation as an activity that takes place between two languages, but regards it as a cross-cultural event. moreover, she puts forward a new perspective of viewing culture which broadens the parameters normally considered by translation theorists, prescriptive or otherwise by understanding culture in the broader anthropological sense to refer to all socially conditioned aspects of human life rather than in the narrow sense of mans advanced intellectual development as reflected in the arts. she suggests that the translation theorists take culture rather than text as translation unit and take culture into consideration. her words has an epoch-making meaning, which makes a change in the translation field, that is, cultural turn. 2.2 the nature of literary translationthe famous writer mao dun gives literary translation such a definition: literary translation is to use another language to express the image of the sl, to make the readers when reading the translated version, have the same inspirations, touching feelings and the joy of beauty as they are reading the source text.( guo fuqiang,2006,1:13) zhang jin (1987:14) takes literary translation as the communicational course and tool between the two linguistic societies in the literary field. its purpose is to promote the political, economical and cultural progress and its task is to duplicate the image in mirrored in the source text from the sl into the tl intactly. literary translation needs to transmit the style and the meaning of the source text, therefore its necessary to study the creator of the meaning and style of the source text. the meaning of the text is usually the flowing of the true feeling of the author and the style of the text is the style of the language of the author, which usually shows the agreement with the style of the author and that is the text is the man. the style is the man. as such a close relationship between the author and his text, one of the literary school, whose emphasis is the author, holds that literary translation should study the life experience, the development of the thought, the language style, the intention of the author. according to lefevere (2001:74), who is himself both a translator and comparators: the translation of literature as taking place not in a vacuum in which two languages meet but, rather, in the concept of all the traditions of the two literatures. it also takes place when written and their translation meet an encounter in which at least one of the parties is a human being, made of fresh and provided with an agenda of his or her own. translators mediate between literary traditions, and they do so with some goal in mind, other than that of making the original available in a neutral objective way.chapter three the effect of cultural context on literary translation3.1 the translators familiarity with the source and target culturescultural context plays an important role in translation since translation is a cross-culture activity of transferring between two languages, not only the meaning but also the culture. cultural meanings are intricately woven into the texture of the language. the creative writers ability to capture and project them is of primary importance because this should be reflected in the translated works. thus it is a process involving two cultures. caught between the need to keep the original color and the need to be understood by the target language readers outside the cultural and lingual situation, a translator has to be aware of the two cultural contexts. according to catford (quoted in wang binqin,1995, 3:65), instances of untranslatability can arise from two sources: one is linguistic source, and the other is cultural source. a translator who fails to take the cultural context into account is likely to make some ridiculous mistakes. the very existence of a cultural gap can affect the process of translating by interfering with the translators logical judgment and linguistic selection. indeed, different people may have different associations about the same thing or concept. unless we have a good knowledge about each others culture, we shall not be able to understand why the western people are averse to number 13 and why the chinese people worship dragon. in english, many words, phrases or idioms infer particular cultural connotations. if the translator doesnt know the real meaning, the translation may stray from the point. for example:1) a lion may come to be holden to a mouse. 凤凰也有落水时. 2) a: why didnt you come back to work yesterday? b: its a blue monday. a: 昨天你怎么没来上班? b: 甭提了,倒霉透啦.3) she wouldnt have been my cup of tea. 她不是我的意中人。4) do you shoot the moon yet? 你赢了吗?lets come to the following examples:i) when good americans die, they go to pairs. this is a famous saying of oscar wilde to satire the good americans. these americans are gentlemen on surface, but in their inner heart, they want to have the luxurious life. at that time, pairs was the paradise of the money and luxury. however, in order to be a gentleman, they call it an evil place. so they can only go after their death.ii)明儿你服侍我吧，我认你做干女孩，version a: how would you like to come and work for me and be my god- daughter? (translated by david hawkes)version b: you must come and work for me, ill make you my adopted daughter.(杨宪益译) in version a the translator didnt know the chinese cultural background well, so he regarded the 干女孩 in chinese as the 教女 in english and translated it into god-daughter to misunderstand the authors original meaning. while mr. yangs adopted daughter conforms to the chinese culture.the next example also shows chinese strong cultural features:iii) 当初她的娘断七以后，由阿眉的舅父，姑父出面讲定这一万块钱来存在庄上.永远不能动用本息，要到阿眉出嫁的时候，一咕脑给她做垫箱钱呢。(茅盾:子夜)version: it belongs to mei-ching: when her mother died，her uncles got together to discuss what to do with the money shed left, and they decided to set aside this ten thousand dollars and put it in the bank, and it wasnt to be touched until mei-ching marries and takes it along with her as her dowry. (许梦雄译) 断七is a funeral custom coming into being after the prevailing of buddhism in china: if a person died after seven days, his family must hold a seven-day memorial ceremony. since the english natives do not have the custom, the translator generalized the cultural term and translated it into died. in addition to the cultural differences mentioned above, there are the other special cultural features, including geographical, political and religious features. next we will dwell on these features.(1) geographical differences may even make the translator and target language readers at a complete loss at the natural phenomena about geography. best wind in chinese refers to spring wind which is linked to revolutionary power, while west wind refers to autumn wind which made people associate with decaying power. the sea is in the east of china and the wind is from the east in spring. so the warm current is from the sea, the wind from the east makes people feel warm and comfortable. on the other hand, in winter the wind from the west or northwest is piercingly cold because of the current from siberia. so for chinese, the west wind always symbolizes the coldness, which, however, reminds the british people of warmth and comforts. british poet john mansfield described the west wind as the following:its a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds cries;and aprils in the west, and daffodils.from this poem above we can know the completely opposite reference.(2) different understanding of political features can also lead target text readers to confusions. for example:were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, i should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.version a:我们是要一个没有报纸的政府呢，还是要没有政府的报纸呢，如果让我决定。我会毫不犹豫的选择后者。version b:我们是要一个没有言论自由的政府呢，还是无需政府管理的言论自由，如果让我决定，我会毫不犹豫的选择后者。 if we translate the above sentence by its literal meaning; the translation will be like version a. as we know the newspaper always serves the government of ruling class but why are the american government and the newspapers opposite? so we have to understand the political context of that period. the author, thomas jefferson, is an excellent american democratic revolutionist. the speech above reflected his anti-feudal and democratic idea. in his view, the newspaper is the synonym of the freedom. in view of this political context we will approve of the adoption of version b.(3) h