perspectives2010

UN CO RR EC TE D P RO OF AUTHOR’S QUERY SHEET Author(s): C. Tian Article title: RMPS Article no: 463763 Dear Author The following queries have arisen during the editing of your manuscript and are identified on the proofs. Unless advised otherwise, please submit all corrections using the CATS online correction form. AQ1 Is ‘Bassnett & Lefevere’ correct? It was just ‘Lefevere’. AQ2 Please provide caption fot the Figure 1. AQ3 Where should Davies, Halliday & Kress and Halliday be mentioned in the text? UN CO RR EC TE D P RO OF 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 Etymological implications of domestication and foreignization: a Chinese perspective Chuanmao Tian* Yangtze University, School of Foreign Studies, 1 South Ring Road, Yangtze University, Jingzhou City, Hubei, P. R. China, Jingzhou, 434023 China (Received 28 July 2009; final version received 4 October 2009) From an etymological perspective, domestication (of animals) indicates that the object to be domesticated is of a lower-class species, that human beings are egocentric and superior to other creatures, and that the domesticating act is related to a moral attitude. Extended to Translation Studies, domestication implies that the target language and culture is superior to the source language and culture, and that the source text serves as an object used by the receiving culture. Moreover, this paper holds that domestication and foreignization are directional, mutually complementary, quantitative and qualitative, and multi-layered. Finally, it is suggested that research on domestication is practical and fruitful. Keywords: domestication; foreignization; translation research; etymological metaphor; relativity; significance 1. Introduction As two big categories of translation strategies (Venuti, 1998), or as two kinds of translators’ moral attitudes (Venuti, 2008), domestication and foreignization (abbreviated to D & F in this paper) have captured the attention of the world, especially in Translation Studies circles in recent years. Much has been discussed about D & F, but no consensus has been reached. In the following paragraphs, I will explore the implications of D & F for translation theory and practice from an etymological perspective. 2. Domestication is metaphorical Like Translation Studies, the words ‘domestication’ and ‘foreignization’ are relatively young in an etymological sense. Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary (11th Edition) indicates that the word ‘domesticate’ first appeared in 1639, developing out of ‘medieval Latin domesticat-, past participle of domesticareBLatin domesticus’.1 But a retrieval of the Oxford English Dictionary corpus shows that ‘domesticating’, ‘domesticate’ and ‘domestication’ appeared for the first time respectively in 1754, 1767 and 1774.2 No matches can be obtained for ‘foreignization’ or ‘foreignizing’ in this corpus, which just tells us that ‘foreignize’ first appeared in 1883. The frequency and time of D & F and their related forms in the corpus are illustrated in Table 1. *Email: tcm_316@163.com. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology Vol. 00, No. 0, Month 2010, 1�15 ISSN 0907-676X print/ISSN 1747-6623 online # 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09076761003632541 http://www.informaworld.com C:/3B2WIN/temp files/RMPS463763_S100.3d[x] Thursday 25th February 2010 19:25:33 UN CO RR EC TE D P RO OF Interestingly, the findings concerning ‘foreignization’, ‘foreignizing’ and ‘foreign- ize’ roughly coincide with those in the OneLook dictionaries.3 The Oxford English dictionary (OED) generously offers two citations on ‘foreignize’, but the OneLook dictionaries offer no results for ‘foreignization’, ‘foreignizing’ and ‘foreignize’. Obviously, the lexicographers pay no attention to the fact that these terms are extensively used in Translation Studies, thus ignoring Translation Studies as an academic discipline as well as the status of translation scholars. Here, I do not care about the origin of D & F, the accuracy of their frequency or contemporary lexicographers’ ideological stance. My major concern is with the terms’ original semantic meaning and beyond. Let us first see some contexts concerning ‘domesticate’, ‘domestication’ and ‘domesticating’ in the OED corpus. (1) There is a sameness of colour in the wild turkey, and the original stock seems to have been black, domestication generally inducing a variety of colours. (1830) (2) The variations . . . so common and multiform in organic beings under domestication. (1859) (3) Her domestication with this family. (1866) (4) I would rather . . . see her married to some honest and tender-hearted man, whose love might induce him to domesticate with her. (1767) (5) Domesticate yourself there, while you stay at Naples. (1773) (6) Ostrich farmers, in domesticating the bird, have apparently a regard to moral training. (1785) (7) I propose an improved rollover relief for what is often called/domestication /, that is the transfer of an overseas branch to a separate non-resident company. (1977) (8) She explains how to find and evaluate germ plasm, distinguish inbreeders from outbreeders, make crosses, spot mutations and domesticate wild plants. (1993) The above examples show that the three words were originally related to organisms, plants, animals or humans. In terms of plants or animals, domestication refers to a process of change from the uncultivated to the cultivated, from the wild to the tamed. The domesticated object was sometimes called a ‘variation’ as in Example (2). In terms of humans, domestication refers to a process of adapting oneself to an individual, a family or a community as in Examples (4), (3) and (5). As is explicitly or implicitly indicated in the examples, domestication involves both external and 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 Table 1. The frequency of D & F and their related forms. TOT 900s 1700s 1800s 1900s 2000s Domestication 17 1 8 8 Domesticating 11 3 5 3 Domesticate 3 1 1 1 Foreignization 0 Foreignizing 0 Foreignize 2 2 Note: TOT�total frequencies. 2 T. Chuanmao C:/3B2WIN/temp files/RMPS463763_S100.3d[x] Thursday 25th February 2010 19:25:34 UN CO RR EC TE D P RO OF internal mutations. For instance, Example (1) shows that the color of the turkey slightly changed after domestication. It is a kind of external change. Examples (3), (4) and (5) imply that the three persons labeled by ‘her’, ‘him’ and ‘yourself ’ would have made changes in some aspects, such as personality, lifestyle or even language, so as to suit the ‘Other’. The problems are why the things in question were domesticated, what happened in domestication and what the difference is before and after domestication. If a plant or animal were not domesticated, it would be regarded as a wild plant or beast, a kind of undeveloped species; if a human were not domesticated, they would be called an outsider or alien. Therefore, domestication seems to mean that a lower-class species is upgraded to an upper-class species and an outsider is turned to an insider. So far as domestication in translation is concerned, it has several implications. First, the author, the source text and the source culture are like a lower-class species. This is evidenced in the history of mankind. In ancient China, Central China ( , zhongyuan in Chinese) had a well-developed agriculture and a superior culture. It regarded itself as the central empire and called its backward neighbouring ethnic groups yi ( ) to the east, man ( ) to the south, rong ( ) to the west and di ( ) to the north (Luo, 1984, p. 1). The four terms carried a strong derogatory meaning in classical Chinese. The oral interpreting activities took place between zhongyuan, yi, man, rong and di 2000 years ago. But little has been recorded about it. We just know that the names for the interpreters in yi, man, rong and di were ji ( ), xiang ( ), yi ( ) and didi ( ). The disparaging terms yi and man were extended to refer to foreigners outside China in the Ming and Qing dynasties. The Opium War (1840�1842) opened China’s door, which had been closed to Westerners for centuries. Western powers, by means of their warships and guns, ran wild in China. Some open-minded Chinese intellectuals were strongly aware of the backwardness of their country and exclaimed shi yi chang ji yi zhi yi ( , we were able to defeat the Westerners by learning their advanced technologies). On the one hand, they called Westerners yi, which is a sign that they looked down upon Westerners and their culture as a whole because they still held fast to the view that their kingdom was the central kingdom and their culture was superior to foreign cultures. On the other hand, they realized that Western technologies, including military technologies, were more advanced. This kind of self-contradictory view was reflected in the translations by Yan Fu ( ), Lin Shu ( ) and other translators of the day. On the one hand, they introduced advanced Western knowledge to China; on the other hand, they managed to bring the source language and textual form as near as possible to their own literary tradition, making remarkable deletions, additions and revisions. The undertone of the Chinese yi and man being equivalent to ‘primitive, uncivilized and savage’ is echoed in Western civilizations. A case in point is the word ‘heathen’. The Random House thesaurus (RHT, College Edition) explains ‘heathen’ by offering descriptive synonyms, such as ‘non-Christian’, ‘non-Jew’ and ‘non-Muslim’ (1989, pp. 337�338). Judaism and Christianity used the term heathen for people or ethnic groups who worshipped other religions or did not believe in any religion. Muslims called Hindus heathens. Another synonym provided by the RHT is ‘infidel’, which means both having no faith and being disloyal or unfaithful. ‘Infidel’ reminds us of Horace’s ‘fidus interpres’ (Bassnett & Lefevere, 2001, p. 3). According to Horace, a ‘fidus’ translator/interpreter was one who could be trusted, who got the job done on time and to the satisfaction of both parties (ibid.). Then, an infidel in translation might be interpreted as one who could not be trusted because they tried 75 80 85 90 95 100 105 110 115 120 AQ1 Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 3 C:/3B2WIN/temp files/RMPS463763_S100.3d[x] Thursday 25th February 2010 19:25:36 UN CO RR EC TE D P RO OF to bring other religions or cultures to their own as near as possible, domesticating all exotic things or conflicting ideas. What lies at the heart of the concept of ‘heathen’ is a kind of egocentrism embedded in every religion, especially in powerful religions or cultures. For instance, the translators in the ancient Roman Empire actually performed a looting translation of Greek culture (Hu, 2005, p. 56; Xie, 2003, p. 45). The names of gods in Greek mythology were adapted to Roman names, such as ‘Dionysus’ being turned to ‘Bacchus’. Moreover, the symbolic meaning of many Greek gods was modified in Roman mythology. Dionysus is the god of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, whereas Bacchus is the patron deity of agriculture and the theatre, also known as the Liberator (Eleutherios), freeing one from one’s normal self, by madness, ecstasy or wine.4 The Dionysus/Bacchus example shows the second metaphorical sense of domestication: that a domesticating translation is a variation. Domestication of a plant or animal involves a change in living conditions or environment. Translation also relates to the change in the environment for a text to live in, which is implied in the statement of ‘translation works on distance’ by Anthony Pym in his Translation and text transfer (1998). Translation usually involves the transfer of a text from one place to another except for a bilingual/multilingual community (e.g. Hong Kong) where translation may be done for those who know only one of the languages used in the community. When a text leaves its own language-culture environment for another language-culture environment, its relation to its own environment will be severed because the language in which it was written has been replaced by another language, namely the target or receiving language. The target language is not necessarily related to the source-language culture but intimately to its own culture. In other words, the language replacement is a kind of domestication. Weng Xianliang (1983, p. 135), a late Chinese scholar and translator, points out that translation from a foreign language to Chinese, in some sense, is a kind of sinocization. True, most words and expressions in a language contain some historical residues of their own culture. When target-language readers read the translated text, some words and expressions will remind them of something in their own history or culture. This kind of linguistic variation cannot be avoided and may be labeled ‘passive domestication’. ‘Active domestication’ does not link with the use of language but with the translator’s attitude and purpose, which may be regarded as the third metaphorical sense of domestication for translation. As is indicated in Example (6), domesticating animals, such as ostriches, involves moral training. Translation also concerns a moral attitude taken by a translator. It is almost impossible for a translator to take a neutral stance, neither source-biased nor target-biased. Lawrence Venuti points out that adoption of domestication or foreignization, in its final analysis, is a moral attitude (see Guo, 2009, p. 35). The translator’s attitude toward the source text is influenced by their purpose. For instance, the Chinese translations of the Holy Bible by the Roman Catholic missionaries, such as P.L. De Poirot, Giulio Aleni and Janior Emmanuel Diaz in China during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, adopted an active domesticating translation strategy (Ma, 2001, pp. 296�298). In order to make Chinese people easily understand and believe in Christianity, the Jesuit translators intentionally borrowed many concepts from Confucianism and Taoism to render the concepts in the Bible. 125 130 135 140 145 150 155 160 165 4 T. Chuanmao C:/3B2WIN/temp files/RMPS463763_S100.3d[x] Thursday 25th February 2010 19:25:36 UN CO RR EC TE D P RO OF 3. D & F are relative 3.1. D & F are directional The results for retrieving ‘foreignize’ in the OED corpus are as follows: (9) Whether this in-sweeping migration is to foreignize us. (1883) (10) We needlessly foreignize our tongue by multiplying the single f, l, and v endings. (1894) The word ‘foreignize’ in Example (10) implies an adaptation of ‘our tongue’ to a certain foreign language ‘by multiplying the single f, l, and v endings’. The word ‘domesticate’ in Example (4) indicates that the man will make changes in some aspects, such as personality or lifestyle, so as to suit the woman. Both examples show that the subjects in question get near to something like a person or a language. In other words, D & F are directional. In this respect, D & F are like equivalence in translation (Pym, 1998). When we mention equivalence, it usually means that the target text (TT) is equivalent to the source text (ST), not vice versa. Otherwise, it cannot be called a translation. D & F revolve around the target text rather than the source text. The target text’s swaying to the source language and culture (SLC) or to the target language and culture (TLC) determines whether it is a domesticating or foreignizing translation. The directionality of D & F is illustrated in Figure 1. Let us take ‘keep your breath to cool your porridge’ (p. 17), an idiom used by, for instance, English author Jane Austen in her Pride and prejudice (first published in 1813). Its four Chinese translations, by Wang Keyi (1955), Sun Zhili (1990), Zhang Ling and Zhang Yang (1993) and Lei Limei (1995), are as follows: (11) (p. 29) a.[liu kou qi chui liang xi fan, save one mouthful of breath to cool the rice gruel] (12) (p. 23) b.[liu kou qi chui liang zhou, save one mouthful of breath to cool the congee] (13) (p. 20) c. [sheng xia yi kou qi, hao ba zhou chui liang, save one mouthful of breath so as to cool the congee] (14) (p. 16) d.[sheng dian shuo hua li qi, liu zhe chui liang mai pian zhou, save a bit of the energy of speaking and use it to cool the oats congee] Let us see the rendering of ‘porridge’ in the idiom to decide the location of the translations in the intermediate degrees, or in M.A.K. Halliday’s terms, the range of modality between domestication and foreignization. Example (11) has rendered ‘porridge’ as xi fan ( ) while the other translations have translated it as zhou ( ) or mai pian zhou ( ). In Chinese cuisine, xi fan is a kind of food with rice or millet cooked in much water. Its opposite is gan fan ( , dry rice). Dry rice is rice cooked in so little water that this is almost completely evaporated by heating. Xi fan is made 170 175 180 185 190 195 200 205 SLC foreignization TT domestication TLC Figure 1.AQ2 Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 5 C:/3B2WIN/temp files/RMPS463763_S100.3d[x] Thursday 25th February 2010 19:25:37 UN CO RR EC TE D P RO OF of less rice and much water. The proportion of rice to water varies. If you want it to contain more water content, you will use much more water and much less rice, say, 10% rice and 90% water. Or you want less water in it and then you may use 20% rice and 80% water. One thing is certain that xi fan contains much more water content than gan fan. In the past, xi fan was sometimes made from millet in poor families. Now people generally use rice. When eating, they usually blow it cool because it is very hot. I used to do so in my childhood. So, I can understand Example (11)’s rendering very well. But in English, ‘porridge’ is ‘a thick, sticky food made from oats cooked in water or milk and eaten hot, especially for breakfast; used also to describe similar food made from other cereals’ (Sinclair, 1987, p. 1114). Basically, ‘porridge’ and xi fan are similar in form and way of cooking. But the former is more possibly made from oats and the latter from rice. Moreover, porridge can be used as a general term according to its definition while xi fan is a specific one. In Chinese, the corresponding general term for ‘porridge’ is zhou, which is a congee made from various kinds of cereals. Examples (12) and (13) have used zhou and Example (14) has used a more specific term, mai pian zhou (oats porridge). So far as the modality of D & F is concerned, Example (11) approaches the end of domestication, Examples (12) and (13) get close to the end of foreignization and Example (14) seems to go further than Examples (12) and (13) to be an over-foreignization. 3.2. D & F are mutually convertible Whether it is domestication or foreignization is determined by one’s perspective. Let us examine Example (5) by associating the two terms with humans. Suppose that ‘you’ in Example (5) were a Chinese woman who had lived in Naples for some years. She began to speak Italian, eat the local food, wear the local clothes, follow the local customs and even think like a native in Naples. We Chinese people would say that she had been foreignized. But the Naples people would say that she had been domesticated. In the case of translation, target-language readers will say that a translated text with strong target language-culture characteristics is a domesticating translation. If the target text keeps the source language-culture characteristics, target- language readers will feel that it looks exotic and will claim that it is a foreignizing translation. In the circles of Translation Studies around the world, it seems that researchers always put themselves in the shoes of target-language readers when they talk about D & F, which has almost become a default disco