Domestication in Translation

Abstract

People worldwide hold varied beliefs and mindsets due to different cultural backgrounds. Chinese culture is feathered with Confucianism emphasizing the harmony between man and nature. In contrast, Western culture has the tradition of objectively thinking about the world as a man separated from nature. With the development of globalization, translation is becoming more and more important. In this case, domestication perfectly fulfills gaps caused by civilization differences since the essence of it is to combine local cultures with foreign ones, thus eliminating misunderstandings. However, scholars like Lawrence Venuti strongly oppose this method for the reason that they believe domestication always misleads people by using dominant political opinions. In this paper, researchers mainly focus on the importance of balance in domestication and the possible consequences of excessive domestication. By analyzing several both successful and negative examples of domestication in literary and commercial aspects, researchers want to prove the effectiveness of appropriate domesticating translation. Through the analysis of specific examples, it is able for people to find out secrets of controlling the extends of the usage of domesticating translation by following effective examples and drawbacks and limitations of domestication itself.