Islamic Azad University

East Azarbaijan Science and Research Branch

M.A. Thesis

in English Translation Studies

Subject:

A Socio-Cultural Prospect toward Translation of Tourism Texts on the Basis of Venuti’s Domestication and Foreignization Theory A Case Study of Eastern Azarbaijan Tourism Texts

Supervisor:

Bahloul Salmani, Ph.D.

Advisor:

Bahram Behin, Ph.D.

Summer 2013

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Abstract

Tourism is a lens that provides unique insights into the social, cultural, political and economic processes operating in specific environments. Tourism brochures are texts loaded with culture-specific items. For my research I have chosen the culture specific items (CSIs) of Eastern Azarbaijan Tourism Texts according to Vlahov and Florin (1980) categorization to contrast them with their English versions to find out whether they are domesticated or foreignized according to Venuti’s (1995) theory. This thesis discusses and describes the domesticating and foreignizing translation techniques that are introduced by Lawrence Venuti, applied in the English translations of culture-specific items of Eastern Azarbaijan tourism brochures. It is important to transmit the message adequately, or it may lead to loss of business. Domesticating and foreignizing strategies are popular in translation studies and each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages in translating tourist texts. Domestication approach describes the translation strategy in which a transparent and fluent style is adopted in order to minimize the strangeness of the foreign text for TL readers. Foreignization approach designates the type of translation in which a TT is produced which deliberately breaks target conventions by retaining something of the foreignness of the original. This study first gives a short overview of the concept of culture-specific items and of the domesticating and foreignizing approaches of translation that are applied when translating them. Then it is going to do a contrastive analysis of culture-specific items of Eastern Azarbaijan in Persian language and their translation in English based on domesticating and foreignizing theories to identify the cultural gap in tourism brochures. Finally, based on the study and analysis of domestication and foreignization from the prospective of culture, this thesis draws a conclusion that foreignization should be the major strategy for translation of culture specific items exist in Eastern Azarbaijan Tourism Texts with domestication as a supplement. The results observed in this thesis, is shown on the figures as well. In the process of English globalization, the strategy of foreignizing translation is not only faithful to the original, but also a way to protect and develop Azeri and Persian language and culture.

Key Words:

Translation, Culture, Domestication, Foreignization, Tourism Texts, Eastern Azarbaijan

Abbreviations:

• Source Text: ST
• Target Text: TT
• Culture Specific Item: CSI

Table of Content

Title Page

Abstract

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

2.1.3. Fluency Techniques and Alternative Translation Strategies in the 17th-18th Centuries26

List of Tables

List of Figures

Chapter One: Introduction

1.1. Overview

First of all, in this section, the researcher tends to describe a little about the theory that is applied in this thesis to evaluate the translation of culture specific items in Eastern Azarbaijan Tourism Texts.

One of the key issues in the recent translation theories has been on whether the translator should remain invisible. The term invisibility describes the extent to which certain translation traditions tolerate the presence (i.e. intrusion, intervention) of the translator in the translation (Hatim,2001,45). This term originated in the works of Lawrence Venuti, himself a literary translator since the late 1970s. Venuti suggests that “invisibility” reveals itself in two related phenomena: The “effect of discourse”, that is, the translator’s use of language; A “practice of reading” or the way translations are received and evaluated (Venuti,1995,1).

A translation from one literary language into another one normally involves three transfers: from one natural language into another one; from one time into another; from one cultural milieu into another one (Hochel,1991,41).

Those transfers can result in an invisible (domesticating) translation where the target text is perceived as if it was originally written in the target language, within the target culture and for the contemporary audience. They can also result in a Foreignizing translation, which makes it obvious to the reader that the original literary work belonged to a different language, age and culture.

Hatim defines domestication as “an approach to translation which, in order to combat some of the “alienating” effects of the foreign text, tends to promote a transparent, fluent style”.

Foreignization is “a translation strategy which deliberately breaks target linguistic and cultural conventions by retaining some of the “foreignness” of the source text” (Hatim,2001,46).

The German philosopher and theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher formulated the distinction between the two strategies most emphatically. In his 1813 lecture on the different methods of translation Schleiermacher argued that “there are only two. Either the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him; or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him.” (Schleiermacher,1963). Thus every translator has to choose between a domesticating method and a foreignizing method. The first one is “an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to target-language cultural values, bringing the author back home”, and the second one is “an ethnodeviant pressure on those values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad” (Ibid,20). Further on in this thesis I will show that most translations actually achieve a certain compromise, domesticating the text in some aspects and foreignizing it in others.

Venuti (1995) shows that Anglo-American literary history has been for a long time dominated by domesticating theories – that recommend fluent translating. As France (2000,9) points out, domestication ‘has long been, and still remains, an essential criterion for judging the success of a translation’. For many British readers the model of good writing was provided by such works as Fowler’s Modern English Usage or The King’s English. Those works declared their preference for the familiar over the far-fetched, the concrete over the abstract, the single word over the circumlocution, the short word over the long, Saxon word over the Romance. If one accepted a given stylistic doctrine as possessing general validity, then translations could be all judged by their conformity to conservative literary taste (Ibid,9).

Venuti (1995) defines domesticating translation as a replacement of the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text with a text that is intelligible to the target language reader. Foreignizing translation is defined as a translation that indicates the linguistic and cultural differences of the text by disrupting the cultural codes that prevail in the target language. Other scholars, like Tymoczko (1999), criticize this dichotomy by pointing out that a translation may be radically oriented to the source text in some respects, but depart radically from the source text in other respects, thus denying the existence of the single polarity that describes the orientation of a translation.

This thesis is going to explore the relationship between foreignization and domestication in translations of culture specific items in Eastern Azarbaijan Tourism Texts from Persian language into English language.