Domestication and Foreignization

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translation

Domestication and Foreignization ( English for naturalization and alienation ) describe in linguistics the extent to which translators bring a text into harmony with the culture of the language into which it is being translated. With domestication (naturalization), the translator adapts the translation closely to the target culture, which can lead to the loss of information from the source text. In foreignization , foreign elements are introduced into the target culture. These strategies have been discussed for centuries until Lawrence Venuti introduced them to translation studies in 1995, formulated in their modern sense. Venuti's innovation in this area was his view that there was an ideological dichotomy between domestication and foreignization from which the translator had to choose.

theory

In his 1998 book The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference , Venuti explains that “ Domestication and Foreignization deal with the question of how much a translation adapts a foreign text to the language and culture of the translation, and how much it tends to differentiate between it The text. "

According to Lawrence Venuti, every translator should view the translation process through the prism of culture, which breaks the cultural norms of the source language. It is the translator's task to pass these on to the target-language text while preserving their meaning and their strangeness. Every step in the translation process - from selecting foreign texts to implementing translation strategies to editing, reviewing and reading translations - is conveyed through the diverse cultural values ​​that circulate in the target language.

He believes that the theory and practice of English translation have long been dominated by domestication . He criticizes the translators who, in order to minimize the strangeness of the target text, reduce the foreign cultural norms to target-language cultural values. The domestication clears loud Venuti cultural values by force, creating a text that was as written in the target language and follow the cultural norms of the target reader. He strongly advocates foreignization and regards it as “an ethnically determined pressure on the values ​​of the target language in order to grasp the linguistic and cultural differences of the foreign text and to send the reader abroad”. An adequate translation would be one that emphasizes the strangeness of the source text and does not allow the dominant target culture to absorb the differences in the source culture, but rather signals these differences.

Examples

  • In the German version of his novel Brave New World , authorized by Aldous Huxley in 1932 , the plot is relocated to Berlin and northern Germany. Some of the names of characters in the plot have also been changed: in the original many people are named after well-known British entrepreneurs, in the German edition they are named after German entrepreneurs; Henry Ford , the most important entrepreneur for the novel , remained unchanged . In 1978 a German translation by Eva Walch was published, which again uses the original places and names. In the meantime, a new translation by Uda Strätling has been published, which also leaves the proper names of the original unchanged.
  • The novel The Pilgrim Years of Colorless Mr. Tazaki by the Japanese author Haruki Murakami , translated by Ursula Gräfe , is about five friends, four of whom each have a color in their name - red, blue, white and black. According to Gräfe, the friends' surnames could have been translated with "Weißkirch" or "Schwarzfeld" without any problems, but she left it with Akai (red), Aoi (blue), Shiroi (white) and Kuroi (black) because that sound far more natural in Japanese. In the introductory scene of the friends, she then added who stood for which color.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jekatherina Lebedewa: In other words: the perfect translation remains utopia.
  2. ^ Lawrence Venuti: The Translator's Invisibility . Routledge, New York 1995, ISBN 978-0-415-11538-4 .
  3. ^ Daniel Gile: Basic concepts and models for interpreter and translator training . John Benjamin's Pub. Co, Amsterdam Philadelphia 2009, ISBN 978-90-272-2433-0 , pp. 251-252.
  4. ↑ Hristina Racheva: Translating Cultures. Translating Iran. Domestication and foreignization strategies in the translation of Iranian short stories.
  5. ↑ Brave New World. A novel of the future. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2007, verso of the title page.
  6. ↑ Tanuki-sama: Interview with Haruki Murakami's translator Ursula Gräfe. Tanuki Republic, December 2, 2017.