First of all, I would like to express my deep appreciation to my supervisor Ms. Tian Debei, who offered me her insightful comments and enlightening suggestions in the whole course of my proposal development and thesis writing. Under her guidance, my understanding of the research process and my interest in translation developed.

I am also greatly indebted to Prof. Zhou Fangzhu who has shown great concern about my work. His instruction and encouragement has been of great value to me.

I would like to give my thanks to my families—my mother-in-law, who took on all the housework for me; my husband, who kept encouraging me in the process of my thesis writing; and my 7-year-old son, who never complained in the absence of my company so many nights when I was busy with my work.

Finally, I would also like to extend my gratitude to all the members in the School of Foreign Studies in Anhui University for offering me this invaluable opportunity to further my studies.

Cultural gaps between the source language and the target language have always turned out to be a hard nut for translators to crack. Domestication and foreignization, the two strategies a translator employs in dealing with them, have given rise to much controversy in recent years.

To clarify the misunderstanding that domestication and foreignization are liberal and literal translation in other words, this thesis first distinguishes the two pairs of terms and points out that the former pair is mainly concerned with cultural connotations while the latter are ways to deal with the linguistic form.

In the hope of finding out the leading factors of domestication and foreignization, this thesis then surveys domestication and foreignization from the historical perspective by a research of the two strategies adopted in Chinese history, which include domestication in the late Qing Dynasty and foreignization in the May Fourth period. Inspired by the descriptive translation theory, the author explores domestication and foreignization in a descriptive approach. Unlike traditional prescriptive theories, the descriptive theory insists that the study of a translation should be subject to a certain cultural environment. By analyzing the environment and the correspondent strategy adopted in each epoch, the author concludes that domestication or foreignization is confined to the social，cultural and political factors of a specific historical period. When the target culture views itself as being superior to the source culture, the translator tends to adopt the domesticating strategy. If the target culture regards itself as inferior to the source culture, the foreignizing strategy may be employed. Therefore it is the author’s opinion that domestication or foreignization in fact embodies the translator’s interpretation of the power relation between the two cultures.

Finally, an analysis is made to the recipient environment of China in the twenty-first century. On the one hand, China is still at the periphery of the world culture, so the influence from the powerful culture is inevitable. On the other hand, along with the deeper understanding of the foreign culture, Chinese readers’ cultural competence has improved and their taste for more foreignness in the translation must be satisfied. In view of this recipient environment, foreignization should play a leading role in Chinese translation in the new century, which is not only feasible but also essential.

Key words: cultural differences; domestication; foreignization; recipient environment; cultural identity; cultural awareness

翻译中的跨文化因素是一个令译者感到棘手的问题。归化及异化--译

为澄清归化异化等于直译意译的误解，本文首先区分了这两对概念并指出归化异化涉及文化内涵的处理，而直译意译指的是对语言形式的处理。故此归化异化并非直译意译的同义词。

本文运用描写的方法探讨了中国历史上晚清的归化翻译以及五四时期的异化翻译，旨在了解导致两种不同翻译方法的决定性因素。与传统规范性理论不同，描写论强调对翻译的研究应该放在一定的文化环境之下进行，因此本文着重分析了各时期归化异化策略的采用与当时接受环境的相互关系，从而得出结论：归化异化受特定时代的社会，文化，政治等因素的制约。当译语文化自视优于源语文化时，译者会采用归化译法，反之则会采用异化的策略。因此作者认为归化异化事实上体现了译者对两种文化之间权力对比关系的理解。

最后本文分析了21世纪中国的接受环境。一方面，中国仍处于世界文化的边缘，强势文化的渗透是不可避免的。另一方面，随着对外国文化的逐步了解，读者对异国风味的要求也大大提高。为了满足这种接受环境的需要，异化翻译在新世纪的中国翻译中应占主导地位，这不但是可行的，而且是必须的。

关键词：文化差异；归化；异化；接受环境；文化身份；文化意识

Chapter One Introduction…………………………………………………….....1

Chapter Two Cultural Differences and Domestication and Foreignization………………………………………………………………….…...4

2.1 Cultural differences and translation…………………………………….…. 4

2.2 Debates on domestication and foreignization……………………………....6

2.3 The theoretical framework—a descriptive approach needed ……………..14

Chapter Three: The Recipient Environment and Domestication and Foreignization in Chinese History………………………………………………..18

3.1 Domesticating translation in the late Qing Dynasty……………………….18

3.2 Foreignizing translation during the May Fourth period…………………....25

3.3 Summary…………………………………………………………………...30

Chapter Four The Recipient Environment of China and Its Translation in the 21^st Century…………. .……………………………………………………….…...33

4.1 The recipient environment of China in the 21^st century………………………33

4.2 The necessity of preserving cultural differences…………………………..….34

4.3 The feasibility of preserving cultural differences…………………………......36

4.4 Foreignization: a way of preserving cultural diversities………………………44

4.5 The limitation of foreignization. …………………………. . . …………….....47

Chapter Five Conclusion…………………………………………………...…....52

Bibliography…………………………….…………………………………….….. .55

It is hard to date back to the origin of translation practices, yet it is agreed that translating may be one of the most controversial types of event in this world. At first, translation is merely viewed as a process of language transfer and a number of specialists in translation adopt the theories of linguistics to analyze and direct the activity of translation. Those theories are source-oriented and they only stress the authority of the author and fidelity to the source-text. Under their guidance, the translator is reduced to being invisible, his subjectivity totally ignored. Linguistic theories tend to view translation as a science and fail to see that it is more of an art in fact. This duality requires translator and translationists to look at translation from more perspectives than only from the linguistic perspective. Vermeer states “Linguistics alone won’t help us. First, because translating is not merely and not even primarily a linguistic process. Secondly, because linguistics has not yet formulated the right questions to tackle our problems.”( Nord, 2001:10)

With the development of translating activities, translation is understood to be not a purely objective activity and the constraints governing the real-life translational behavior come to be realized. Translationists begin to consider broader issues of context, history and convention in the translation and thus there is a cultural turn in translation since 1970’s. In the recent thirty years, there are two obvious tendencies in translation studies. First, translation theories are branded with communicative theories. Second, the importance is shifted to the transfer of culture from that of language. The combination of the two tendencies, in effect, signifies that translation is now seen as an intercultural communicative behavior. Christiane Nord substitutes “translation” with “intercultural communication” while Holz-Manttari replaces it with “intercultural cooperation”. Andre Levefere regards translation as “acculturation” and R.Daniel Shaw creates the word “transculturation”. (Guo,2000:272) All this means translation has come into its most important and also the most complex period: cultural translation.

With increasing attention paid to cultural factors in translation, the strategies a translator employs in dealing with them, namely, foreignization which is oriented towards the SL culture, and domestication which is oriented towards the TL culture, have given rise to much controversy in the recent years. There are advocators and opponents to each of the two strategies both at home and abroad.

In the international translation forum, some translationists favor E. Nida’s “closest natural correspondence” and his famous remark that “a good translation is not like a translation at all” (domestication). Some translation theorists, like L.Venuti’, advocate foreignizing translation from the post-colonial perspective. To their mind, domestication may contribute to the progress of colonization and foreignization can serve as a way to resist cultural hegemony. Robinson, a Canadian translationist, argues that domesticating translation may not be so harmful as Venuti believes and that domestication and foreignization only show the translators’ different interpretations of the special expressions rather than two different methods. The Skopos theory, however, holds that the strategy a translator adopts, whether domestication or foreignization, depends on the function a translation is expected to serve. At home, the debates about domestication and foreignization are not less heated. Liu Yingkai argues for foreignization and states that “Domestication will lead the translation to a wrong track ” because it may “transform the objective realities of the foreign countries and wipe off the national features so as to make them assimilated and submit to the target language. This will inevitably lead to the distortion of the original.” (Wang Dongfeng, 2002:25) Cai Ping holds that the purpose of translation is communication, and a domesticated translation is easy for the reader to understand, so domestication should be preferred.(Cai, 2002:41)

The present author finds that domestication and foreignization are mistaken by many for literal and liberal translation now, so before we begin our contention about domestication and foreignization, one question may be considered first: Are domestication and foreignization synonymous to literal and liberal translation? In view of this, the author thinks it necessary to distinguish the two pairs of terms. Second, it is found so far the arguments of domestic translationists still center on the language transfer in a text (Liu Yingkai, for example.), in other words, domestication and foreignization are viewed solely as some operational skill of translation and there has been little historical analysis about the issue. Therefore the second question may be raised: Is domestication or foreignization a timeless strategy, that is, can they be applied in translations in whatsoever epoch in history? Why are there domesticating and foreifnizing translation in Chinese history? For this reason, the present author thinks it important to find out the leading cause of the two different strategies and a descriptive approach is needed, that is, to analyze the recipient environment and the correspondent strategy used in the hope of discovering the governing factors of domestication and foreignization. The author believes that it may be enlightening to do so because such an exploration may shed some light on the Chinese translation in the twenty-first century.

The present author shall first explain in Chapter Two the concept of domestication and foreignization, their relationship with liberal translation and literal translation and the theoretical framework of the thesis. Chapter Three analyzes the domesticating and foreignizing translation done in Chinese history and the corresponding recipient environment, which includes domestication in the late Qing Dynasty and foreignization during the May Fourth period. In Chapter Four the author discusses the recipient environment of China in the twenty-first century and explores the necessity and feasibility of practicing foreignization in Chinese translation accordingly and Chapter Five is the conclusion.

Ke Ping (2000:152) cited the following example to show misreadings incurred by cultural presuppositions. In the preface to his translation of the fourteenth century Chinese historical novel “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, Moss Roberts quotes what King Liu Bei says to comfort his sworn brother Zhang Fei who is very sorry for having lost, through negligence, the city of Xuzhou as well as Liu’s two wives entrusted to his care:兄弟如手足，妻子如衣服, but misrepresents it as “A brother is a limb, wives and children are but clothes”. In earlier vernacular Chinese(in which the novel was written), the expression 妻子may be used in the two senses either as a single word, denoting “wife”, which is typical of modern usage, or as a phrase composed of two separate lexemes 妻(wife) and 子(children), so neither dictionaries nor the linguistic context can be helpful to the translator. But if he is familiar with traditional Chinese values, he may have rendered it as “one’s brothers are like his limbs while his wives are like his clothes.”

This example has demonstrated the importance of knowing about the culture of the source language. Language is not only the carrier of message but also the carrier of culture. John Lyons says “The language of a particular society is a component of the culture of this society. The differences in the words of each language surely reflect the important cultural characteristics of the things, customs and various activities of the society that uses this language.” (Guo,2000:335) Translation as an intercultural communication is not only a process of language transfer but also a process of transplanting culture. Nida (2001:82) points out that “For truly successful translating, biculturalism is even more important than bilingualism, since words only have meanings in terms of the cultures in which they function.”

No linguistic text can exist out of a certain cultural content, yet cultural differences are so great as to constitute the most difficult task for the translator to deal with. For example, some traditional Chinese greetings such as “吃了么?” and “上哪儿去啊?” often cause headaches of a translator. If they are put literally into English “ Have you eaten?” and “Where are you going?”, they would sound rather unnatural to English readers. Because of cultural differences, misunderstanding may arise, although the language used may be faultless. That is to say, even when all linguistic symbols can be translated into a system of different linguistic symbols, the relationships of the text to the source culture can never be reproduced by the relations between the target text and the target culture. This, of course, doesn’t mean that cultures are absolutely incompatible. The acceptance of culture is possible, because human beings all live on the same planet and they share more or less similar aspects of culture. Cultural overlaps enable people of different cultures to communicate and understand each other. But undoubtedly the most important feature of culture is its heterogeneity. Cultures differ from one another and each culture is unique. As cultures are diverse, so are languages. With difference in cultures and differences in languages, difficulties often arise in communicating between cultures and across cultures. Cultural differences include first cultural conflict, i.e., different cultures look at the same thing differently. For example, westerners can hardly understand Chinese people’s feeling toward the pine tree, the bamboo or the plum because in their culture these are just ordinary plants without any special implications. In the same way it is difficult for Chinese people to empathize with Americans in their emotions toward the oak or the blueberry. Second, cultural differences also include cultural blank which means a cultural phenomenon specific to one culture but quite unfamiliar to another. For example, American hippies are something incomprehensible to Chinese and similarly Chinese cultural terms such as太极and 气功require painstaking explanations to make foreigners have some vague idea of it. Cultural gaps between the source language and the target language have always turned out to be a hard nut for translators to crack. So Christine.Nord (2001:34) says “Translating means comparing cultures.”

In the actual translation practice, especially in the translation of literary texts, a translator may often confront cultural differences so that he will find himself always faced with a decision-making, that is,to either make his translation incline toward the source culture — foreignizing or toward the target culture—domesticating. In contemporary translation, commentators often compare David Hawkes’ translation of Chinese classic novel Hong Lou Meng with that of Mr. Yang Xianyi in order to show the domesticating strategy and foreignizing strategy each adopted. Look at the following examples:

(1)周瑞家的听了笑道；“阿弥陀佛，真坑死人的事儿！等十年未必都这样巧的呢。”

(1a) “Gracious Budda!” Mrs. Chou chuckled. “How terribly chancy! You might wait for ten years without such a run of luck.”(Yang)

(1b) “God bless my son!” Zhou Rui’s wife exclaimed,” You would certainly need some patience! Why, you might wait ten years before getting all those things at the proper times!”(Hawkes)

2)巧媳妇做不出没米的粥来。

(2a) Even the cleverest housewife can’t cook a meal without rice.(Yang)

(2b) Even the cleverest housewife can’t make bread without flour! (Hawkes)

In these two examples, the translations (1b) and (2b) are obviously oriented towards the target-language culture and its aim is to facilitate the readers. In doing so, the translator even adapts the source culture to make it in line with the target culture. This translation method is called domestication. Another way often adopted by translators to tackle cultural differences is foreignization and (1a) and (2a) are foreignizing translations here. Foreignization is oriented towards the source-language culture and its aim is to preserve source culture so that foreignness can be achieved in translation. Domestication and foreignization are two strategies adopted by the translator to deal with cultural differences. We may see there are advantages and disadvantages to both. Domesticating translation is concerned mainly with message; it is reader-based. Foreignization is concerned with cultural straits; it is author-based. The former stresses the communicative function of the translation whilst the latter attaches great importance to the reservation of the foreign culture.

The author thinks it necessary to correct the misunderstanding that may arise from the examples cited here. Does domestication or foreignization only refer to a translation skill that is employed to tackle some culture-specific terms such as米and 阿弥陀佛？The answer to this question is of course “not”. Domestication or foreignization should be understood as a tendentious and overall translation practice. They show the translator’s inclination toward the source text and the corresponding domesticating or foreignizing methods he adopts in handling all the cultural elements in the source text, including not only the differences in techno-economic culture and social culture but also those in ideational and linguistic culture. That is to say, a domesticating translation may replace the customs, values, religious beliefs and even the linguistic feature of the source culture with those of the target culture. A foreignizing translation, however, tries to preserve those divergences as much as possible. We may get some idea of this by an exemplary case study of the poem A red, red rose translated by Su Manshu. In order to achieve a striking contrast, the author juxtaposes the original and the translated version.

O my Luve’s like a red red rose 颍颍赤墙靡，

That’s newly sprung in June; 首夏初发苞。

O my Luve’s like the melodie, 恻恻清商曲，

That’s sweatly play’d in tune 眇音何远姚。

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass 予美谅夭绍，

So deep in Luve am I; 幽情中自持。

And I will luve thee still, my dear 沧海会流枯，

Till a’ the seas gang dry; 相爱无绝期。

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, 沧海会流枯，

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun; 顽石烂炎熹。

I will luve thee still, my dear, 微命属如缕，

While the sands o’life shall run. 相爱无绝期。

And fare thee weel, my only luve! 惨祛别予美，

And fare thee weel a while! 离隔在须臾。

And I will come again, my Luve 阿阳早日归，

Tho’ it were ten thousand mile! 万里莫踟躇！

This is one of Robert Burns’ most popular love lyrics written essentially in the metrical form of the ballad stanza. The extreme simplicity of the language and the charming rhythmic beat of the reverse suit better than anything else the poet’s true sentiments towards his beloved. The Chinese text rendered by Su strikes us first with the language he used. Such words as “颍颍”, “商曲”, “远姚”and “烂炎熹” are so unusual and scholastic that one can never imagine this poem is written by a Scotch farmer poet. What’s more, the employment of some pedantic expressions from Book of Odes such as “掺祛” which means “holding one’s sleeve” and “阿阳” which means “I” endow the poem a very strong sense of original Chinese poem. Second, when we read the original of Robert Burns, we are impressed by the forthright character of the hero who, with great passion, expresses his deep love to his beloved by comparing her to a red rose. However, Su’s translation brings about totally different feelings. From the lines such as “幽情中自持”, “沧海会流枯”, “微命属如缕”, “相爱无绝期”and “惨祛别予美”, we see in our mind not the departing scene of a Scottish farmer saying good-bye to his girl, but that of a Chinese scholar to a lady, the emotions exquisite, the love unspoken. Thus the characteristics of the original are completely altered. So, Su’s rendition is domesticated in two senses. First, the language is sinolized; Second, the ideology of the original is domesticated.

It is not uncommon to find that domestication is viewed by many as the synonym to liberal translation and foreignization the synomym to literal translation. Thus it may not be unnecessary for us to distinguish the two pairs of terms or we will get bogged down again in the controversy that arose decades ago about literal and liberal translation.

Liberal translation and literal translation are mainly concerned with the treatment of the linguistic form. A literal translation stresses fidelity to the linguistic form while a liberal translation focuses on the meaning but changes the form of the source language. For example, if the sentence “She loves her son” is rendered into “她爱她儿子”, this is a literal translation. The Chinese rendition “他很凶” of the original English “He is as fierce as a tiger” is a liberal translation. Yet we see the first translation is not foreignized and the second rendition is not a domesticated translation, either.

Domestication and foreignization contain meanings in two senses—domestication and foreignization in the sense of linguistic presentation and in the cultural sense. Only when discrepancy exists in expressing the same conception in the two languages, domestication and foreignization in the first sense arise. For example, if we render “to kill two birds with one stone” into “一箭双雕”, this is a liberal translation and also a domesticated translation because the linguistic content of the source is replaced by a Chinese one . The literal rendition “一石二鸟”is a foreignized rendition for the new linguistic presentation is introduced.

Domestication and foreignization in the other sense—cultural sense occurs when different cultural connotations exist. For example, if we translate “Thank you” into “谢谢你”, this is a literal translation and whether it is a domesticated or foreignized rendition must depend on different contexts. If in the context where someone says this in response to one’s help, this is not a foreignized translation, because there is nothing new to our culture. But if in the context where someone says this in reply to one’s compliment, say, for his appearance or performance, the Chinese rendition “谢谢你”is foreignized, because a typical Chinese response to a compliment may be “哪里，哪里” or “不敢当，不敢当” and the expression “谢谢你” manifests the alien culture to us.

Seen from this, liberal translation and literal translation are not synonymous to domestication and foreignization, but they may overlap sometimes. Foreignness in language or culture can serve as a standard to judge whether a translation is domesticated or foreignized. Literal and liberal translations are techniques to tackle the linguistic form and they are two ways to transcode language. Domestication and foreignization, however, are concerned with the two cultures, the former meaning replacing the source culture with the target culture and the latter preserving the differences of the source culture. Only when there are differences in both the linguistic presentation and cultural connotation, domestication and foreignization exist.

In the recent years, there are heated debates on domestication and foreignization, each having its advocators and opponents. In fact, in the west the quarrel between domestication and foreignization can be dated as far back as to Ancient Rome. It is just like the quarrel between word-for-word translation and sense-for-sense translation debated by Horace and St. Jerome. And in the 19th century, a German translator Schleiermacher made his famous comment, “A translator should move either the translated author toward the new reader (domestication) or the reader toward the author (foreignization) ”(Xie Ming:53).

In contemporary international translation forum, the person who has initiated the controversy between domestication and foreignization is Eugene.A.Nida and it is the Italian scholar Lawrence Venuti who has led the debate to a white-hot state.

In the 1960’s to 1970’s, Nida constructed his theoretical system of domesticating translation with the key word naturalization. He remarks:

A translation of dynamic equivalence aims at complete naturalness of expression, and tries to relate the receptors to modes of behavior relevant within the context of his own culture; it does not insist that he understand the cultural patterns of the source-language context in order to comprehend the message. (see Nord,2001: 5)

Nida introduces the concept “functional isomorphs” that is, in a certain language system, a concept or a meaning may be expressed in form A but it may be expressed in form B in another language system and still has the same function. So according to him, the English expression “to grow like mushrooms” can very well be translated into Chinese as “雨后春笋” because the Chinese readers will have the similar associations to those of English readers and thus the dynamic equivalence is achieved. Similarly, the Chinese sayings like “只要工夫深，铁杵磨成针” is functional equivalent to “Many strokes fell great oaks”. Obviously Nida stresses more on the retention of meaning than that of cultural essence, which is consistent with his principle of translation, that is, translating is translating meaning.

In the 1990’s, Lawrence Venuti, an Italian visiting scholar definitely presents his opinion for foreignization. Venuti notices that when translating other languages into English, American translating and publishing companies always confine their selections to few writers whose works cater for the mainstream of American values but may not accord with the values of their fellow countrymen. For example, they always select the works which expose the backward mentality and social lag of the third world countries, but always reject those representing the struggle of the third world for equality and against exploitation. Meanwhile the domesticating method is invariably adopted in order to efface the cultural otherness. Venuti gives the definitions to domestication and foreignization. According to him, domestication is complying with the current mainstream values of the target language-culture and employing a very conservative and assimilative means with the original text so as to make it cater for the indigenous canon, publishing tide and political needs. He defines foreignization as “diverging from the indigenous mainstream values and retaining the language and cultural differences of the original.” (Wang Donfeng,2002:25) Venuti holds that domesticating translation makes the translator invisible and the dominant cultures usually adopt the domesticating translation strategy to produce coherent reading for the target language readers. On the surface, the translated text reads fluently and naturally but source language culture is effaced. He calls this “cultural imperialism” and advocates that American translators employ the resistant strategy—foreignizing translation to resist cultural hegemonism.

Amid such confusion, what should be the choice of Chinese translators? The author thinks that neither Nida’s “functional equivalence” nor Venuti’s “resistant foreignization” is adequate for Chinese translators to handle cultural problems in translation. In fact Nida’s functional equivalence is based on and is used to guide the translation of Bible. His translation work, splendid though it is, comes out of a specific purpose: the translation of a Christian text with the goal of converting non-Christians to a different spiritual viewpoint. Nida thinks that language is not restricted to mere informative and expressive functions, it must also be clearly operative. In order to entail a good understanding and operative function for the receptors of the target language, the message in the Bible with the meaning in Latin “do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing” can be rendered in English as “do it in such a way that even your closest friend will not know about it”. Nida points out that this translation first avoids the possible misunderstanding by the receptors and thus makes clear the tangible reference to present-day circumstances or life. This practice may be acceptable in translating Bible, but in handling cultural factors in texts other than Biblical one, functional equivalence is inadequate and even misleading. Peter Newmark thinks that Nida’s functional equivalence has done too much for the readers by rendering everything so plain, so easy. He states “Following Nida’s ‘Translating is communicating’ with its emphasis on a readable (instantly?), understandable text (although Nida also insists on accuracy and fidelity), one notices inevitably a great loss of meaning in the dropping of so many Biblical metaphors which, Nida insists, the reader cannot understand.”(Newmark,2001: 51)

As for Venuti’s foreignizing strategy, it is put forward in the “aggressive monolingual” cultural background such as the Anglo-American culture. It mainly discusses about translating the third world texts into the cultures of power, so his foreignization is oriented to the translators in the Anglo-American translation field. We must take great care not to indiscriminately apply any foreign theories to Chinese translation practice. We must look at things from the Chinese reality.

In China, from the 1980’s, there are also many debates on domestication and foreignization. In 1987, Liu Yingkai published his paper Domestication—The Wrong Track of Translation in which he pointed out the prevalence of domestication in Chinese translation field. Liu summed up the manifestation of domestication in five forms: (1) the abuse of four-word idioms; (2) the abuse of words of classic elegance; (3) the abuse of abstraction; (4) the abuse of replacement; (5) the abuse of allusions and images. In the year 1997, Xu Jun, a college professor, conducted a survey of the readers’ responses to the different versions of the French novel Scarlet and Black. The readers’ comments and discussions triggered off a debate on domestication and foreignization, and from then on disputes are often heard in China. Those starting from the perspective of communication theory, like Cai Ping, advocate domestication by saying that the purpose of translation is communication, so it is the translator’s responsibility to make the SL text explicit to the reader (but Cai doesn’t express clearly what he means by “explicit”). Those who object to domestication, like Liu Yingkai, argue that domestication may efface the national features of a culture, so foreignization should be preferred.

These various viewpoints presented to be for or against domestication or foreignizaton are from different perspectives: from text function (Nida), from ideology (Venuti), from communicative theory (Cai Ping) and from national identity (Liu Yingkai). The author thinks that domestication and foreignization as two strategies to tackle cultural differences can’t be a timeless and universal rule, or there would have been no debates on them. Why are they used in different historical periods, for example, why are there domesticating and foreignizing translation in Chinese history? To the author’s mind, the key to the issue is to find out the factors that may lead to domestication and foreignization, thus a historical perspective may be needed to look at this issue. The theoretical framework is provided in the following.

Traditional translation theories are characterized by the dominance of the source text. The authority of the author is never challenged while the translator and target reader are viewed only as the passive receptors. Adequacy and equivalence are the only norms to judge a translation. Under the guidance of such theories, translators are in hot pursuit of the fidelity to the original. Faithfulness therefore is the yardstick for a “good translation”. Traditional translation theories are prescriptive because they always set up some norms for the translator to abide by. The end product is often subject to detailed scrutiny under those norms and any breach to them may be deemed as illegitimate. Maria Tymoczko, a famous translation theorist of America comments that “As a language art, translation has often been considered from the viewpoint of timeless linguistic rules which has led to a normative tendency in the theory.”(Lin,2001:43) Prescriptive translation studies is marked by extreme source-orientedness in which the subjectivity of the translator is totally ignored, and the translator is reduced to being invisible and translating is considered a static process of language transfer. The prescriptive theories, though useful in guiding translation practice, fail to see the factors that condition the translational behavior and they seem to regard translating as done in the vacuum. But is there a “faithful” or “good” translation? And faithful to what? If a translation is not faithful, that is, a ‘bad’ translation so to speak, then why can it be welcome and successful sometimes? Take Ezra Pound’s translation of classical Chinese poems for example, his translation was more a matter of creative misreading or appropriation than translation in the strict sense. For example, he translated Li Bai’s “故人西辞黄鹤楼” into “Ko-jin goes west from Kokaku-ro” which translated back into Chinese is “可金东辞可卡苦罗”, quite an adaptation to the original. His misinterpretation made him render “荒城空大漠” into “desolate castle, the sky, the wide desert”, three nouns juxtaposed with no verbs linking them. The English readers were really amazed at such linguistic novelty and the impact was obvious. One of the readers commented “The strange but exquisite literal translation is a shock to our language but a new beauty is acquired meanwhile.”(Xie Tianzhen,19991:204) Such mistranslations, whether intentional or unintentional, abounded in Pound’s translation of Chinese poems, yet his translations won great success in the west and enjoyed many readers. His success doesn’t lie in his fidelity to the original of course, it must be explained from exophoric factors. Another example, Xuan Zang, a Buddhist and translator, was famous for his fidelity in translating Buddhist scriptures, yet he translated “wife” in the sutras into Chinese “wife and concubines” although he knew Buddhism forbad polygamy. The prescriptive translation theories seem unable to explain these questions because they are largely confined to technical analysis of the translation and not concerned with the exophoric factors.

The awareness of the deficiency of the traditional translation theories leads the scholars to approach translation from a different perspective which has shifted translation studies from source- orientedness to target-orientedness. Gideon Toury initiates the shift with his publication of two books that marks the birth of the Descriptive Theory—In Search of a Theory of Translation and Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Toury comments that “Descriptive translation studies—when they attend to process, product, and function—set translation practices in time and, thus by extension, in politics, ideology, economics, culture.”(ibid: 43) The descriptive theory is concerned with the governing factors of the real-life translational behavior and holds that translations always come into being within a certain cultural environment and are designed to meet certain needs of it. The descriptive theory doesn’t care about literal or liberal translation, instead it is concerned with the contextualization of the translation. That is, to approach translation from a macroscopic point of view. The questions often raised by a descriptive theorist are “How is one to determine what would be taken up and what would be left out?” and “what function does a translation serve in the target culture?”. According to this theory, there is not an “ideal” or “real” translation of a source text, because a text may be interpreted differently over time and endowed with different meanings since a text is open forever to interpretations. Compared with traditional theories, the descriptive theory is more tolerant. It assigns a status for various types of translation and brings to a halt the quarrels caused by the confusion of prescriptive norms. It admits the partiality of translation, i.e., no source text can be translated fully into the target text. Toury (2001:12) remarks that “The extent to which features of a source are retained in its translation…seems to suggest an operation in the interest of the source text…”and this leads the Manipulation School to initiate their concept of “manipulation”, i.e., all translations have undergone the manipulation, whatever the degree, of the translator. That’s why there are different translations of the same source text out of different translators. Andre Levefere, the pioneer of the Manipulation School and a descriptive theorist too, puts forward his concept of “patronage”, that is, all translations are commissioned by their patrons or initiators and thus they have a say in shaping the strategies different translators select to produce their translations. His “patronage” refers to any kind of force that can be influential in encouraging or discouraging, even censoring, works of translation.

In a word, the prescriptive theories view translation microscopically and are tied to the source and target texts, while the descriptive theory views translating from a macro point of view by setting translation practices in time and stresses the influential forces of the environment of the target culture. If a descriptive theorist is to examine Pound’s translations of Chinese poems, he may explore such constraints as the translator himself, time, readership and other factors but not only compare the translation with the original.

Judging by traditional translation theories, domesticating translation may be criticized for being unfaithful and foreignizing translation may be‘good’ for its fidelity. But can the issue be so simple? Can the either/or pattern of value judgment be applicable to domestication and foreignization? Then we can reject all the existing domesticated translations and practice foreignization universally. Yet the fact is that both strategies are adopted in history and have achieved great success, so the problem is to trace down the root and find a viable explanation. For example, why domestication is widely practiced in the late Qing while foreignization is a main translation method in the May Fourth period? A descriptive approach is therefore applicable, for only by examining translation and translation strategies from the time they are in, the governing factors of a translation can be discovered. Thus the author explores domestication and foreignization in the Chinese history through a description of the recipient environment in each epoch and hopes to discover the interrelationship between them.

It is widely known that in Chinese history, there have been five times of large-scale translation activities. The first is the translation of Buddhist scriptures from the Sanscrit from the Han Dynasty onward (206B.C-AD220); the second is the translation from late Ming Dynasty to the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the third time is the translation of much western thought and literature starting in the 19th century AD and then the translation during the 1950’s and the translation from 1970’s to 1980’s. Among them the most important are the translations of Buddhist scriptures and the translation in the late Qing and the May Fourth period (c.1889-1920). Both these periods of translation witnessed the enormous influence of translated works upon the subsequent development of native Chinese culture. The author is going to conduct a survey of domestication and foreignization in the late Qing Dynasty and the May Fourth period because translations in these periods are most representative and have exerted great influence on Chinese culture.

The Opium War in 1840 ended the closed-door policy of the Qing Dynasty and Chinese people opened their eyes to the outside world for the first time. The war made many patriotic Chinese realize the necessity of learning advanced scientific and cultural knowledge from the western countries, and translating was seen as an important means to fulfill this task. The translating in this period was quite different from the Sutras translating. For one thing, Buddhism was first brought from abroad to China by its missionaries and then Chinese translators gradually began to take part in the translation of it. The translators in the Qing Dynasty, however, took up the translating on their own initiative and their selection of texts was conscious. For another, the translations of the Han and Tang dynasties were mainly sutra translations but the translation in the late Qing was done in a larger scope, covering natural science, social science and literature. The translations done in the late Qing Dynasty falls into three stages: the first stage is from 1840 to 1894 wherein translations of natural science prevails; the second stage is from the year 1895 to the year 1910 during which works of social sciences are largely translated; From 1911 through to several years after the Republic of China is the third stage wherein translation is dominated by literary works. It can be said that the Chinese translation history after the Opium War has been the history of the conflicts and communications between Chinese and western cultures.

Judging from the recipient environment of the late Qing, one may not expect faithful translations of the then translators. Firstly, the people in the late Qing, looking back on the brilliant history of Chinese culture, still had the sense that China was the “Middle Kingdom”, the center, and the foreign countries were inferior. Influenced by this superiority, it’s natural to consider the Chinese way of doing things better or even the only way, so that translators were entitled to domesticate the source texts to make them more acceptable. Lin Shu, for example, often commented that “foreign novels had obtained the essence of the classical Chinese” and that “the scholars in the world, although far separated by the continents, think all the same.”(wang Ke fei,1997:87) Secondly, the long isolation from the outside world resulted in the ignorance of Chinese people. The translators themselves didn’t have much more knowledge about foreign culture than their readers did, and some translators, like Lin Shu, knew no foreign languages at all. Translators didn’t know how to deal with foreign culture because this was the first time they were exposed to it on such a large scale. In the late Qing Dynasty, the ethical and moral basis of Chinese values was still the Confucian doctrines. The translators who were elite of the society had received the education of Confucianism long and couldn’t but judge the foreign culture from conventional Chinese moral values. They only translated those that didn’t go against the Chinese moral values, or they would rewrite them. Last but not the least, in the late Qing Dynasty, the right to education belonged only to the privileged few and the majority of people were illiterate. Books were written in classical Chinese which was quite different from the spoken Chinese. Elegant style was a very important factor to judge a translated text. So at that time, it was common that western novels, proses were changed to classical Chinese style with total loss of their structural features and linguistic genres and Shakespeare, Byron, Dickens and Conan Doyle were almost the same in the Chinese translations. Yan Fu stated that if people who had not read the Chinese classics were to read his translations, they would not understand them, but that was ‘the fault of the readers and the translator is not to blame’(Levefere,2001:18).

Given all this, translation was indeed a hard job for the translators in the late Qing Dynasty. They must first shorten the distance between the foreign and Chinese culture, which made it necessary to adapt the source texts, to add or delete at their own will. The reasons for the prevalence of domesticating translation are many, but the main reason is that translators are only concerned about how to comply with the social and cultural trend of the late Qing and win readers. Translators went out of their way to make sure the translations comply with the readers’ taste and ethical values. In this case, literary values or aesthetic functions of the translated texts were ignored. In 1889 Yan Fu put forward his three criteria for translation, namely “faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance” but those criteria were not put into practice, even by Yan Fu himself. Translators in the Qing Dynasty, on the one hand, were forced to deal with the outside world for the first time, and on the other hand, couldn’t shake off the deep-rooted notion of the self-centeredness so their translation was very immature. Translation was regarded more of a way for entertainment than for social development. Translators didn’t feel like absorbing new cultural elements and they translated the texts in order to replace. The translation took the place of the original and they functioned as the original in the culture to the extent that the originals disappear behind the translation. In such a recipient environment, traces of domestication can be seen everywhere.

Ethical interference had caused widespread adaptations in the translation activities in the late Qing. We know no translation is done in the vacuum, but in a certain ideological atmosphere of a society. The deep-rooted ethical values control people’s behavior and thought patterns and eventually shape the moral standards of the people. The ethical culture of a certain society is always exclusive and always regards different ethics as heretical. This is especially the case with Chinese ethics. China in the late Qing Dynasty is a society with a long feudal history of over 2000 years. The long-time feudal cultural deposits made China an ethically sensitive and conservative nation. By contrast, western cultures, baptised by Renaissance that stressed the freedom of humanity and reversion to nature showed more respect to human than to norms and conventions. So western cultures had greater openness than Chinese culture ethically and this unbalance surely affected the translators’ decision-making in translation strategies.

Generally when confronted with conflicting ethics, translators of the late Qing Dynasty would rewrite the original without any qualm. The most notorious adaptation in the Qing Dynasty was made by Pan Xizi in the translation of Hargard’s novel Joan Haste. He purposefully cut out many romantic parts of Joan and Henry’s love story and deleted the fact that Joan was pregnant before marriage and Henry’s defiance to his parents’ disapproval of his association with Joan. So after careful adaptation in line with Chinese ethics, the heroine thus became a chaste and undefiled woman standing up to rigid Chinese moral test. Joan Haste was considered to be “chaste and undefiled, willing to help others at the cost of her own life. A real fairy in the human world”. (Wang Xiaoyuan, 1999:11) The public opinion awarded so much praise to her that later when Lin Shu’s full-length version of this novel appeared, abuses and criticisms swarmped Joan Haste with words like “a shameless woman, loose in moral and regardless of her duties, only seeks her own pleasure, a real enemy to human society.”(ibid.) Some criticized Lin Shu for not having left out the harmful parts and said “Westerners don’t evade this issue while for the sake of Chinese society, they should be cut out.” (ibid.)The completely contradictory responses and comments of readers showed why domestication at that time was dominant in the translation circle. Pan Xizi conformed to the ideological atmosphere in that era, or rather, the expectation of target readership while Lin Shu’s version was quite above the readers’ reception because Joan Haste’s image was not what had been admitted by Confucianism. In fact it was just what had been rejected.

We know filial piety was advocated by Confucianism and is still a cherished value in Chinese society, while westerners have never been taught to have such a quality. But at the beginning of the twentieth century when Lin Shu translated the English novel Montezuma’s Daughter (《蒙特祖马的女儿》), he intentionally changed the title as《英孝子火山报仇记》. And in the translated text, he portrayed at full length the plots how the hero tried every means to take revenge for his mother. When Lin translated Dickens’ novel The Old Curiosity Shop, he entitled his translation 《孝女耐儿传》likewise. Why did translators highlight a quality that wasn’t valued in its source culture? Did they misread the novels? Of course not. The real reason is that any translation is restricted by the mainstream ideology of the society and translators must abide by it in order to win the audience.

All people enjoy beauty, but opinions vary as to what is beauty. People belonging to one culture may have similar opinions about what beauty means, which, however, may disagree with those of a different culture. That is to say, different cultures may have different aesthetic values. The differences in aesthetic values between western and Chinese culture are great because the two cultures are so remote from each other. One important aspect is the divergence in literary norms which not only causes the different linguistic styles but also discrepant writing patterns. When one literary form has been widely accepted as normal in a culture, it will be stored in the people’s mind as a schema and gradually form an aesthetic expectation for the readers’ reading psychology. The aesthetic schema of a nation is always exclusive so when an alien and heterogeneous aesthetic phenomenon comes into contact with it, it is inevitable that the conflict will arise.

Traditional Chinese novels adopted the “zhanghui style”—a type of traditional Chinese novel with each chapter headed by a couplet giving the gist of its content. The four Chinese classic novels, for example, all adopted such a style. Considering the reading habit of the readers, translators in the late Qing preserved such practice in their translation of novels. When Su Manshu and Chen Duxiu translated the French novel The Miserables in 1904, they substituted each chapter of the original with a couplet. For example, the original titles for the first and second sections were: the Close of a Day’s March and Prudence Recommended to Wisdom, but in the translated text Su and Chen entitled them “迪涅城行人落魄，苦巴馆店主无情” and “感穷途华贱伤心，遇贫客渔夫设计”. Each chapter was begun with “This is to tell of...” (且说) and ended with “If you wish to know more, you will have to wait for the next chapter.”(未知后事如何，且待下回分解.) The discourse markers of the traditional Chinese novel are clearly seen in the translation and their purpose of course is to cater to the readers’ aesthetic standards.

Chinese and westerners hold quite different ideas as to what is called a beautiful woman and a handsome man. English culture considers health and vigor indispensable to being beautiful and this has been accepted by modern Chinese. People in the Qing Dynasty, who had never been exposed to such aesthetic values before and influenced by Chinese traditional culture, thought that a beautiful woman should be slim, delicate, white-complexioned and even a little morbid. We may know this from the images of traditional Chinese belles such as Xi Shi and Lin Daiyu. To comply with such tastes of the readership, the translators in the Qing Dynasty always domesticated the descriptions of the figures in the foreign novels. The following two passages can show how foreign figures are transformed into Chinese ones:

(3) 一声门响，袅袅婷婷的走进一个美人。真是眼含秋水，眉展春山，杏脸桃腮，柳腰云鬓，倒把仲达吓了一惊。问道：“莫非是林小姐么？何得来到这里？这里是英国呀。” (《电术奇谈》)

(4) 要过他的名片看看，知道他名马字路义，问了年纪，知道他二十五岁，看看他生的身裁雄伟，仪表不俗，唇红齿白，出言风雅，吐属不凡。可惜他生在法兰西。那法兰西没有见过什么美男子，所以瑞福没得好比他。要是中国人见了他，作起小说来，一定又要说什么面如冠玉，唇若涂朱，貌似潘安，才同宋玉的了。(《毒蛇圈》)

The words such as “袅袅婷婷” and “眼含秋水，眉展春山，杏脸桃腮，柳腰云鬓” reflect the Qing literati’s aesthetics standards of the beauty of a woman while a handsome man is always “面如冠玉，唇若涂朱，貌似潘安，才同宋玉”. Chen Diexian, a literary critic in the late Qing, commented that readers only knew the source text was written by a foreign writer; they didn’t know that except the main facts in the whole book, the translated version was‘written’ by the Chinese translator.

Traditional Chinese novels are narrated in the omniscient and omnipotent point of view. The third person as the narrator is widely used. English novels, however, often employ diversified narrative manners including the third person, the first person, and sometimes the third and the first person are used alternately. In view of the reading habit of the audience, translators of the late Qing often changed the narrative angle of the original. Timothy Richard changed “我” to “某” in《百年一觉》and in Zhang Kunde’s《华生笔记案》， “我” was replaced by “华生”. Lin Shu changed the first person “我” to “小仲马” in his translation《巴黎茶花女遗事》，he didn’t know that the first person here may not necessarily be the writer himself. In Yan Fu’s translation (although not literary text), we can find this feature, too. He translated the beginning paragraph of Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics as the following:

赫胥黎独处一室之中，在英伦之南，背山而面野。槛外诸境，历历如在几下。乃悬想二千年前，当罗马大将恺撒未到时，此间有何景物？计惟有天造草昧，人功未施。其借征人境者，不过几处荒坟，散见坡陀起伏间，而灌木丛林，蒙茸山麓，未经删治如今日者，则无疑也。

The original reads as follows:

It may be safely assumed that, two thousand years ago, before Caesar set foot in southern Britain, the whole countryside visible from the windows of the room in which I write, was in what is called “the state of nature.” Except, it may be, by raising a few sepulchral mounds, such as those which still, here and there, break the flowing contours the downs, man’s hands had made no mark upon it; and the thin veil of vegetation which overspread the broad-backed heights and the shelving sides of the coombs was unaffected by his industry.

Yan rendered the first person “I” into the third person “赫胥黎” because Chinese, influenced by Confucianism, tended to be modest and less showy and thought the use of “我” in the writing to be too arrogant. Thus we often read classic Chinese works beginning with “太史公曰” but not “我认为...” or “在我看来”, even now we Chinese avoid using the first “我” too often and sometimes we use “我们” in place of it.

Besides this, translators of the Qing Dynasty often added their comments in their translations, and this may come from the traditional Chinese way of novel criticism. Zhou Guisheng wrote down his remarks like this in his translation《毒蛇圈》：“可见世上人的本事，是个没有穷尽的译书的想法，那瑞福是个法国人，未曾读过中国书。要是他读了中国书，他此时一定要引着孔子的两句话说道‘后生可畏，焉知来者之不如今也’了”. (Han Yongzhi:68) This typical practice of domesticating not only changed the narrative structure but also affected the transmission of the thoughts of the original.

The end of the rule of the Qing Empire and the influence of the October Revolution awakened the Chinese intellectuals to stage a salvation movement. They came to know why China was bullied by other countries was that China was backward and they felt it their duty to build up the country, which, they thought, must resort to literature. The New Literature Movement was therefore launched for a transformation of old Chinese literature and to fulfill this, intellectuals believed they must introduce advanced foreign works to enlighten the Chinese people which made translation very prosperous during the May Fourth period. But, examining the translations done in the Qing Dynasty, translators discovered many problems which must be solved first. Some important aspects of translation that had been ignored by translators in the Qing Dynasty—the function of translation, the methods of translation and the language to be used, were now considered seriously by the intellectuals.

First, translators no longer viewed translation as the way only to entertain readers but a way for the salvation of the nation. Lu Xun, Zou Zuoren and many other translators emphasized the function of translation in “reforming the minds and complementing the civilization”. Seen from this, the selection of source texts became very important. The previous translators such as Lin Shu were criticized for their selection of source works. Lin translated more than 170 novels all his life but it was later agreed that his selection of the source texts was rather random and some novels he selected were good for nothing. Fu Sinian commented that“The best translations are several scientific books rendered from Japanese, and the next best are some of Yan Fu’s translations. The most vulgar is Lin’s translations.”(Chen Fukang:210) Luo Jialun, a leader of the New Literature Movement, wrote in 1918 that “the most important is the selection of materials….Novels are a means to reform the society, so the aim of translation is that there must be something (in the source text) that we can use for reference….”(ibid:208) Hu Shi, Fu Sinian and other translators brought forward their criteria for the selection. Hu suggested translating only the classic works of the famous writers and that books of the second class should never be introduced. Fu advised that before translating the translator should be sure whether the text had any value and whether it was the best.

Intellectuals criticized and discarded the domesticating translation in the late Qing. Liu Bannong criticized Lin Shu in 1918 by saying that Lin made great adaptations and deletions to the original so that “the spirit has lost and the original is distorted beyond recognition”. (ibid:202) Liu ridiculed that Lin was ‘great’ because he could translate the western novels in the style of the novels of the Tang Dynasty, and he added, “Translating is different from writing in that when writing, you are the subject; but when translating, the subject is the source text.” (ibid:202)

Translators in the May Fourth period realized the importance of respecting the original and they favored literal translation, which in fact contained meanings in two senses: one was to retain the presentation of the source language and the other was to reserve the foreign flavor (foreign culture) of the source text. That is to say foreignization was widely accepted in the then translation. As to the reservation of foreign flavor, Zou Zuoren stated “The translated works are worth reading because they show the differences existing between us and the foreigners in customs and ideology. If these differences prevent reading, then it is unnecessary to read them lest they should cause headaches, or one may as well read the native novels.”(Chen Fukang:170) Lu Xun expressed his opinions against domestication to the effect that “Before translating, one has to solve one problem: to domesticate it or reserve the foreignness? … My opinion is that if one only wants his works to be understandable, he had better write or rewrite them, to change foreign stories to Chinese ones and foreigners to Chinese. If it is a translation, first its aim is not only to emphathize but also to inform the readers when they read the translated foreign work. At least they should know where and when such a thing happened. This is just like traveling abroad: it must have an exotic atmosphere, that is, the ‘foreign flavor’”(ibid:298)

From the above, we see translators during the May Fourth period were quite different from those in the Qing Dynasty. The latter always saw foreign culture as inferior to that of China, so that in translating, they often treated the original without proper respect. Translation was more of a way to entertain than to enlighten the Chinese readership. The former, however, began to know the backwardness of China not only in economy, science but also in politics and culture. This awareness prompted the translators to bridge the gap with their translation so that their attitude toward the original was serious and even pious, which may explain why foreignization was widely practised then. Translators in this period discarded the previous appropriative and assimilative translation, they were eager not only to absorb foreign cultures, but also to westernize the Chinese language. Thus Lu Jun and Hou Xiangqun (2000:284) comment that since Lu Xun, Chinese translation has gone to the stage of ‘sincere imitation’(真心模仿) and China-centricism was replaced by Eurocentricism.

The differential use of the classical Chinese and spoken Chinese had long existed in China and was criticized by many people. In the late Qing, people objected to wenyan (classical Chinese) and advocated using vernacular Chinese because vernacular was simple and easy to understand. But gradually they felt the inadequacy of the vernacular and wanted to improve it. Fu Sinian commented “…The vernacular we are using now… is utterly dry and washy… and not suitable for literature.”(Xie Tianzhen,2000:127) Lu Xun also stated“…Chinese words and language are extremely imprecise…”(Chen Fukang:296) Translators thought that the Chinese language was not scientific, but the introduction of advanced foreign scientific knowledge must resort to a scientific language, so that the Chinese language must be ‘westernized’ or ‘Europeanized’. Translators introduced a large number of western lexemes and syntactic structures into the Chinese language, and they even went so far as to translate word for word hoping to reserve the linguistic features of the source language. Lu Xun was a typical example of this. He said, “I...preserve the original to such an extent as not to reverse the order of the sentence....”(ibid.297) Translators advocated retaining the foreignness and stressed the necessity of absorbing new presentations, which was what they called “original flavor”. Thus a prominent form of “foreignization”, namely “translationese”, was widely discovered in the then translation.

Translationese functions to displace the overly transparent linguistic and idiomatic norms of vernacular Chinese and at the same time to open up a closed language system for new avenues of syntactic and reflective articulation. The existence of such a style in the field of twentieth-century Chinese literature testifies to the extent to which translation from foreign literature has affected the very structure of language and expressions in Chinese. Europeanized sentences are widely found to be written by the then or later Chinese writers. For example, “我们只是说着自己，每当我们不能再守沉默的时候。”（Zhou Zuoren） “我信生活决不是我们大多数人仅仅从自身经验推得的那样暗惨。”(Xu Zhimo) “我从来没有这样被窘迫过”(Rou Shi) “如果我能够，我要写下我的悔恨和悲哀，为子君，为我自己。”(Lu Xun)

The May Fourth period witnessed the translation on an unprecedented scale of western works. According to Wang Kefei (1997:148), the period from 1890 to 1919 saw the largest number of literary translations into Chinese. The translated novels even outnumbered the native ones, which stimulated the production of native Chinese novels and new varieties of novels were created. Translations done during this time have profound influence on Chinese culture and its language. In the Qing Dynasty, the influence that translation exerted on the Chinese language mainly stopped at the level of vocabulary. While in the May Fourth period, translation brought far-reaching influence on not only Chinese vocabulary but also its grammar and syntax. Meanwhile, new thoughts and literary forms were introduced on a large scale. With the introduction of new literary forms such as the free-style poetry, prose poems and short stories, Chinese culture was greatly enriched. But for all the good intentions of the translators at that time, they sometimes ran too far: the high degree of foreignizing caused some “hard translation” and was rejected by the readers. For this reason the translations《域外小说集》done by Zhou brothers only sold forty copies. Lu Xun himself later admitted that “the sentences are rigid” and “not worthy to be reprinted”. Translators then were so radical in reforming the Chinese language that they ignored the incompatibility between languages.

If we say the translators in the Qing Dynasty and during the May Fourth period went to the two extremes, with the former being too conservative and the latter being too Europeanized, translation after the founding of People’s Republic of China was more rational. Translators with Bian Zhilin as their representative favored foreignization and advocated “being faithful” both to the form and content while Fulei and Qian Zhongshu preferred domesticating translation with “spirit rather than form” and “sublimation” as their ideal of translation. But neither the two schools adopted an absolute translation strategy, rather, they tended to find a balance between domestication and foreignization and in general the former was more practiced. For example, in the 1930’s Lu Xun transliterated the “the Graces” as “三位希腊的格拉支” and then provided some notes, while in the 80’s it was rendered as “希腊三女神”. This means the translators were more rational. They had learned much from the previous translation and they knew that China was just opening to the outside world and the recipient environment couldn’t accept too much foreignization. Then from the last twenty years of the twentieth century on, foreignization has gradually gained an edge over domestication with the enforcement of the reform and opening policy. Large numbers of western scientific and literary works have been introduced which has promoted the cultural communication between China and the west and enhanced the Chinese people’s understanding of western cultures. In this background, foreignization is adopted by many Chinese translators and has achieved great success.

After the above descriptive analysis, we may understand that domesticating and foreignizing strategies employed in the Chinese history are by no means random, in fact, they are closely related with the recipient environment of the then society. Domestication in the late Qing is due to various social and cultural factors, such as the ideology of superiority, the reader’s taste and psychology, ethical values, aesthetic standards. Foreignization in the May Fourth period, however, is mainly out of the internal need for the reform of the Chinese language and enrichment of Chinese culture, or, to be more specific, for the salvation of the country. To sum up, the reason why domestication is widely practiced is that translators in the Qing, although have the sense of crisis, still regard their own culture as superior to other cultures. While the translators in the May Fourth period come to accept the concept of Euro-centrism and realize the necessity to learn from the other cultures. This analysis enables us to see that domestication and foreignization, as two strategies, in fact embody the selective reception of the source culture on the part of the translator, or to be specific, the target culture. So Toury points out that translations are “facts of target cultures”, and what we need to understand a translation is to contextualize it, that is, to set it in the time of its generation.

The recipient environment is not static but always in a dynamic state. In different epochs of time, the social, cultural and political backgrounds may be far different and people’s needs and aesthetic standards vary significantly. Translators should make decisions on how to tackle cultural differences according to the specific needs of a certain recipient environment, which signifies that translating strategies can never be unchanging. Levefere says:

The important point is that shifts and changes in the technique of translating did not occur at random. Rather, they were intimately Th linked with the way in which different cultures, at different times, came to terms with the phenomenon of translation. With the challenge posed by existence of the Other and the need to select from a number of possible strategies for dealing with that Other. We are, therefore, finally beginning to see different methods of translating as well as different approaches to translational pratices as contingent, not eternal, as changeable, not fixed, because we are beginning to recognize that they have indeed, changed over the centuries. (Levefere:12)

When a translation is examined, traditional value judgment of good or bad always dominate our minds. Following this prescriptive approach, it seems that domesticating translation is always ‘bad’ because of its unfaithfulness and foreignizing translation is ‘good’ for its fidelity. Now many translators and translation theorists, from a prescriptive perspective, criticize Lin Shu and Yan Fu for their domesticating translations, yet we should never forget to take ‘time’ into account. Different eras in history generated different recipient environment. In a feudal society which had been soaked in Confucianism for thousands of years and had been isolated from the outside world too long, too much foreignization was obviously impossible and unacceptable. Seen from a historical perspective, the domesticating strategy in the late Qing is a wise choice in that it introduced the foreign culture in an acceptable way so as to arouse the interest of the literati in translated works and the translating activity.

Stepping on the threshold of the 21^st century, we can’t help wondering what the new century will be like. Various predictions and prophecies are made about the possibilities of this new era, and what is unanimously agreed is that in the twenty-first century the globalization of economy will surely lead to the globalization of culture. Opinions vary as to what is globalization of culture. Some view it as the prestigious culture especially American culture replacing the world cultures. But optimists regard the problem differently. To their mind, globalization of culture means various cultures fuse together to form a collage,that is, globalization of culture is the cultural fusion. Whatever the truth is, it is inevitable that Chinese culture will make more contacts with foreign cultures and be influenced and penetrated by them. It is said that any culture must undergo four phases in its life—germination, development, prosperity and decline, and when the two cultures encounter, the one in the temporary forcefulness must exert more influence on the other. Chinese culture, for all its brilliance in human history, is now at the periphery of the world, so it is bound to receive more influences from those at the center than vice versa.

Second, just as what the author has mentioned above, Chinese culture has been on the receiving end since Lu Xun. Chinese people have realized their backwardness in economy, culture and other fields and this realization has prompted their determination to learn from others. Now great achievements have been made but there is still a long way for China to go from the periphery to the center. Currently China is enforcing its reform and opening policy because it doesn’t feel like lagging behind other cultures. Hence we can say that so long as China doesn’t want to stop its development, it must be open to foreign cultures especially Euro-centered cultures. Now many people are calling on to “decolonize” Chinese culture, yet we must take care not to make China fall into a new state of isolating itself from the international community. To be sure, Chinese culture has largely been “westernized” since the beginning of the twentieth century, but Chinese culture, which is profound in content and rich in heritage can never be “colonized”.

Third, “Chinese culture is good at, and even eager to accept heterogeneous things.”, as is said by Zhang Nanfeng( Xu and Zhang,2002:38). So far we have been exposed to foreign cultures for over one century, which has greatly enriched our culture and promoted our understanding of the world and its people. Since the last one hundred years, western culture has influenced every aspect of China from what we eat, drink to what we wear and use; from what we do to what we think. Not only our lifestyle but also our thoughts, values and world outlook are westernized. Western ideas and values are widely accepted by Chinese, for example, ideas of democracy, freedom, independence, individualism and the western concept of time are stressed by Chinese, too. Chinese mentality has been transformed and this has set a profound foundation for Chinese readers to seek more of the foreign culture and their taste for foreignness is improved.

All this means that the recipient environment of China in the new century will still be open to foreign cultures: first, the influence from foreign cultures especially the western culture is inevitable; second, its own development calls for it to communicate with foreign cultures. This asks the translator to adopt a foreignizing strategy in their translation, that is, to preserve the cultural differences in his translation. The author shall discuss the necessity and feasibility of preserving cultural differences in the following.

When we say that the twenty-first century is the century of cultural globalization, it doesn’t mean that all cultures will be identical or that heterogeneity of all cultures will be wiped off. Globalization of culture may be an irreversible tide, but there is also massive resistance to globalization. As opposed to globalization, cultural pluralism is advocated which stresses the retention of cultural identity. Now how to preserve cultural identity has become a focus in translation. Stuart Hall points out that identity is about defining oneself against what one is not:

To be English is to know yourself in relation to the French, and the hot-blooded Mediterraneans, and the passionate traumatized Russian soul. You go round the entire globe, when you know what everybody else is, then you are what they are not. (Bassnett,2001:133)

That is to say it is the differences that make us distinctive from others and it is by them that we are recognized for ourselves. Once we have lost those differences, our identity is lost. Here is one example to show this. In the Tang Dynasty, Nestorian Christianity, a branch of Christianity, came to China and its missionary Jingjing (景净) began to translate the Bible into Chinese. But influenced by the then prevalent religions such as Buddhism and Taoism, he borrowed a lot of Buddhist and Taoist terms into the translation. For example, “scriptures” was translated as道, 天尊法, 天尊戒; “Bible” was rendered as真经, 尊经, “angel” was诸佛and “Jesus” was rendered as世尊, 景尊, 大师and景通法王. There is a passage in Scripture eulogizing Jesus which reads as follows: 敬礼大圣慈父阿罗诃, 皎皎玉容如日月,巍巍功德超凡圣, 德音妙义若金铎, 法慈广被亿万生。...圣众神威超法海，使我礼拜心安诚,一切善众齐普奉, 同归大法垂天轮。The Scripture borrowed so many Buddhist terms such as功德, 法慈, 法海, 善众 that it was almost the same as the Buddhist sutras; Besides, the employment of the seven-word style popular at that time makes it very indigenous. This may be the reason why Nestorian Christianity soon disappeared in China: the too domesticating translation of its scriptures (whether in words, syntax and style) totally wiped off its cultural identity so that no one realized it was a distinctive religion.

Take David Hawkes’ translation of Hong Lou Meng for another example. His domesticating translation converts Granny Liu, a poor Chinese villager, into a Christian and changes the staple food of south China into bread. Such practice has seriously distorted national features of Chinese culture. It is in this sense that Liu Yingkai points out that “Domestication will lead translation to a wrong track” and Xu Chongxin(1994:102) announces that domestication is like “transfusion of sheep blood into human body”.

We stress preserving cultural identity, to be sure, but it doesn’t mean resorting to domesticating translation so as to retain the “purity” of one’s own culture, we mean all cultures should be respected and the ultimate goal of translation should be the fusion and accretion of all cultures. To preserve cultural identity is to preserve the cultural diversities. Post-modernism, a worldwide cultural thinking of this era holds that “A striking characteristic of post-modernism is not to reduce differences but to find out more of them. The more differences found, admitted and respected, the better people can live and get along in an atmosphere of mutual understanding.”(Wu Nansong,2003:14) In order not to lose oneself on the one hand and to respect the other on the other hand, it is necessary for translators to employ the foreignizing translation in dealing with cultural differences.

Professor Zhang Jin(1987:9) defines translation as “the communication process and communicative tool of the two language societies. Its aim is to promote the political, economic and cultural development of the target society and its task is to transfuse intactly from one language into another the logic and artistic reflections of the real world contained in the original.” So the fundamental task and great significance of translation lie in its function of promoting cultural communication and social progress. Professor Hentington of Harvard University expounds that in the 21^st century the conflicts between countries are culture-rooted rather than ideology-rooted and his statement reflects the urgency of knowing about the cultural discrepancies. The following arrows show the degrees of cultural differences between different nations (see Sang Simin,2000:48), and we can see that differences between Chinese culture and American culture are great.

America/Japan 100%

China/America 100% America/French

China/India America/Germany

China/Japan America/Italy

China/Singapore 0% America/Canada 0%

Undoubtedly the main task of Chinese translators in the new century is how to tackle cultural differences properly to entail mutual understanding between the two cultures. This is a problem of great significance because it may have a bearing on the future of China. Translation must shoulder the responsibility to mediate when the two cultures encounter, confront, and conflict, but it never means writing off the differences, instead, it should reveal those differences and make them accepted by people of the two cultures so that mutual understanding can be achieved.

Lu Xun said that reading a translation must be like traveling abroad, it must have an exotic atmosphere, that is, the ‘foreign flavor’. Then what is ‘foreign flavor’? Here what Lu Xun stressed in fact is not “blindly imitating the western style” in language, but retaining as many alien cultural features as possible. In other words, when translating, a translator must not only pay great attention to the linguistic differences but also cultural differences. If we wipe them off and domesticate them, this is deception in fact and it will barricade the cultural communication. Take the Han and Tang dynasties for example, they are considered the most powerful periods in Chinese history, yet as far as culture is concerned, the Han Dynasty is much inferior to the latter because the cultural policy of the Han Dynasty is to reject all other schools but only to venerate the Confucianism to keep the purity of its culture. On the contrary, the Tang Dynasty is open to the outside world and glad to absorb various thoughts and cultures. So its culture is much colorful and there is a time when “Hu’s clothes and food were a fashion, Hu’s medicine was very popular, Hu’s customs and practices were prevalent in China.”(“Hu”is what Chinese people call the west-Asian countries.)(Wu Nansong:14)

Similarly the western history of civilization is also a history for various cultures to learn from and interact with each other. Yue Daiyun says “It is not exaggerative to say that why European culture still has its vitality up to today is that it has been absorbing different cultural elements so as to enrich and update itself.”(Sun and Zheng,2003: 297) Likewise Chinese culture has been existing for more than two thousand years, yet is still vigorous because it has constantly absorbed heterogeneous cultures from Hindu and western countries to complement itself.

The feasibility of preserving cultural differences in translation mainly concerns the readers’ understanding and reception of foreign cultures. Here we may need to mention Nida’s functional equivalence again. Nida may be the first translation theorist who attaches special importance to readers’ response. He argues that the target receptors should have the same response to the translated text as the original receptors to the source text. Recently he exemplified functional equivalence on an occasion that was not relevant to missionary activities. He said that the English sentence “It is as significant as a game of cricket” could be rendered into French as “C’est aussi significatif que de faire de le course de velo”(这事如同自行车赛一样重要) and into Chinese as “这事如同吃饭一样重要”, then the target reader will obtain the same response as the original reader. Suppose when a Chinese reader reads that an Englishman says “这事如同吃饭一样重要”, what would he think of? He would be led to think that food is scarce in England just as it used to be in China so that “eating” is an important daily activity to English people too.

Can the target reader never understand a different culture? Here we may have a review on the argument between “east wind” and “west wind”. Geographical difference makes east wind and west wind quite opposite natural phenomena to China and England. An English poet Joho Masefield once wrote a poem The West Wind in memory of his hometown Herefordshire. He wrote “It’s warm wind, the west wind, full of birds’ cries,/ I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes,/For it comes from the westlands, the old brown hills, And April’s in the west wind, and daffodils.”(那是一阵温暖的风，西风吹时，万鸟争鸣；/一听西风起，我眼眶中泪盈盈，/因为它是来自西土，那褐色的故乡边，/春天就在西风中到来，还有水仙。--translated by Qian Gechuan)

Need we change the west wind here in order to facilitate the understanding of the Chinese readers? And how to change? Should we turn it to east wind? A translator Xiong Shiyi once translated “碧云天，黄叶地，西风紧，塞雁南飞…” as “Gone are the clouds in the sky and faded are the leaves on the ground./Bitter is the west wind as the wild geese fly from the north to the south...” Wang Tianming, a university professor argues that Xiong’s translation is “unfaithful message” because west wind to English people is warm but here what the Chinese poem wants to convey is the coldness of the wind. He suggests using “fall wind” or “east wind” to replace the west wind here. We’d say this is the translator’s good intention to accommodate the translated text to the readers, but the task of a translator is to reproduce the style and features of the original but not to go beyond his duty to think for the readers.

Peter Newmark (2001:51) asks about what is to be expected of the reader: “Are they to be handed everything on a plate? Are they to make any effort? Are they ever expected to look a word up in a dictionary or an encyclopaedia?” He refutes the idea that all translating is communicating, where the less effort expected of the reader, the better. Anyway the process of reading is also a process of thinking and readers do have the power of judgment and reasoning. The target receptors’ understanding of the translated text is a process of the interaction between the relevant contextual assumption and new information that is fed in. They use deductive reasoning in this process to discover the relevance between the source and target language propositions and the relevant contextual hypothesis that they have activated. Let’s take Shakespeare’s verse “Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?” for example. In order to understand it, Chinese readers must make the following efforts: first they should know this is a love poem and the poet expresses his admiration of his beloved; second, English summer is not so hot. With these as the major premises, the Chinese translation “能否把你比作夏日璀璨”is acceptable and can promote Chinese readers’ understanding of English culture. Similarly, when Chinese readers read “这事像板球赛一样重要”, they combine “重要” with “板球赛” and judge that cricket is a significant game to Englishmen and thus “this matter” is significant, too. Translation is a communication process of cognition and reasoning. Translators should make correct assumptions of the cognitive contexts of the intended readers and choose proper strategies so that the intention of the source language author tallies with the expectation of the target readers. What’s important is that they should never underestimate their readers.

The aesthetic perception brought about by cultural features is mainly the foreignness and freshness. The pleasure coming from the appreciation of the beauty endows translation with a unique aesthetic value. The readers are full of expectations when they read the translated text of a foreign work and long to acquire alien cultural knowledge and relish the alien scenes in mind by way of imagination. If a translator replaces the foreign culture with Chinese culture, he is indeed depriving the readers of their pleasure and fun of contacting foreign culture. If we say in the past when China was a closed country and its culture was isolated from the outside too long, Chinese readers may accept the domesticating translation as natural, now along with the further understanding of western culture and the enrichment of knowledge, readers have improved competence for cultural appreciation.

Many years ago, when Fu Donghua translated the novel Gone With the Wind, he sinolized the names of the characters and places in the original and cut out many “lengthy descriptions and psychological analysis” because “they are not relevant to the development of plots and may well make readers bored”. (Xie Tianzhen,1999:148) Fu said, “...as for many humorous, sharp and mean idioms, I replaced them with Chinese idioms...”(ibid.). Fu’s translation was a great success then and attracted a large audience. It dominated the Chinese translation circle for half a century and not until 1989 was there a new translated version of it. But today when we read Fu’s translation and see such sinolized names as 郝思嘉，白瑞德 and 卫希礼, we may feel somewhat unnatural. When we ‘travel’ from肇嘉州，钟氏坡to曹氏屯, are we traveling in China guided by Fu or in the United States during the Civil War guided by Margaret Mitchel?

Another example. Now, when we read Yan Fu’s translation of Evolution and Ethics“怒生之草，交加之藤，势如争长相雄，各据一壤土。夏与畏日争，冬与严霜争，四时之内，飘风怒吹。或西发西洋，或东起北海，旁午交扇，无时而息。上有乌兽之践喙，下有蚁蟓之啮伤。憔悴孤虚，旋生旋灭。薨枯倾刻，莫可究详。”, are we sure we are reading Huxley or Yan Fu?

Today’s readers may not welcome such translations because they can’t find alien culture—the very thing for which they read a translated text.

Cultural communication and fusion have enabled Chinese readers to have a sound knowledge of western cultures and this in turn promotes their requirements further for culture. The 德先生and赛先生in the May Fourth period have disappeared from our language, such words as “radar”, “bikini”, “montage” and “ostrich policy” have been accepted. Some words and terms, which were once difficult to render now can be translated literally. For example, when Zhu Shenghao translated Shakespeare’s verse “I know not where is that Promethean heat that can thy light relume” in the 1930s, he rendered it as “我不知道什么地方有那天上的神火能够燃起你原来的光彩!”, because at that time few readers knew who Prometheus was. But now Chinese readers are very familiar with this Greek allusion and it may well be translated as “普罗米修斯之火” without causing any difficulty for understanding.

Let’s compare a passage in Montesquieu’s De l’esprit des lois(《论法的精神》) translated by Yan Fu in the 1900s and Zhang Yanshen in 1961:

??????天有天理，形气有形气之理。形而上者固有其理，形而下者亦有其理。乃至禽兽草木，莫不皆然，而于人尤著。（Yan)

??????上帝有他的法；物质世界有它的法；高于人类的‘智灵们’有它们的法；人类有他们的法。(Zhang)

Yan Fu Zhang Yanshen

天 上帝

气 物质世界

形而上 高于人类的“智灵们”

Obviously when Yan Fu tried to replace the ununderstandable western concepts with sinolized terms, Zhang could find in the target language system basically corresponding and equivalent words to render them. Zhang’s translation is sixty years later than Yan’s and this shows how great changes have taken place in China in the sixty years: language, rhetoric system, the world outlook and even thought patterns all underwent huge changes that it could afford a more literal translation. This is because we have got the relevant cultural knowledge from later translations. If no translator had been willing to introduce foreign culture to us, it would still be unacceptable to us now.

With increasing communication with western cultures and the enforcement of reform and opening-up policy, Chinese have become open-minded enough to accept western conceptions and ideologies. Western life-style—independence, individualism, and even their way of showing love have been widely accepted by Chinese. Many years ago, Zhu Shenghao had to translate “He made you a highway to my bed; But I, a maid, die maiden-widowed.” in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as “他要借你做牵引相思的桥梁，可是我却要做一个独守空闺的怨女而死去。” At that time, Chinese culture was still influenced by feudalism and sexuality was a taboo to write about. But in 1990’s, in Fang Ping’s version, the lines were rendered as “他本要借你做捷径，登上我的床，可怜我这处女，守活寡，到死是处女。” Chinese readers accepted it without feeling anything improper. This is only one example to show the recipient environment of China is opener than before in sexual ideology. What’s more, the reader’s acceptance of different linguistic forms has also improved. Mr. Xu Jun launched a questionaire in 1995 in China about the two translated versions of the French novel Scarlet and Black. Readers’ response was that they wanted to read the version of “original flavor”, but not the domesticated and sinolized version. Some readers even welcomed the translationese. Taking the following translations from the different versions for example:

(5a) 这种劳动看上去如此艰苦，却是头一次深入到把法国和瑞士分开的这一带山区里来的旅行者最感到惊奇的劳动之一。(Shanghai version)

(5b) 这种粗活看来非常艰苦，头一回从瑞士翻山越岭到法国来的游客，见了不免大惊小怪。(Hunan version)

(6a) 维立叶尔小城可算是法郎士-孔德省里最美丽的城市当中的一个了。它的白色的房屋，有着用红瓦盖成的尖尖的屋顶，疏疏密密，排列在一个山坡的斜面上，曲折蜿蜒的地方，却被一丛丛的茁壮的栗树衬托出来。杜伯河在旧堡寨的下面，约有数百步的地方奔流着，这旧堡寨是从前西班牙人建筑的，到今天只剩下断瓦蜕垣了。...(Shanghai version)

(6b) 弗郎什-孔泰地区，有不少城镇，风光秀美，维璃叶这座小城可算得上是其中之一。白色的小楼，耸着尖尖的红瓦屋顶，疏疏密密，星散在一片坡地上；繁茂粗壮的栗树，恰好具体而微，点出斜坡的曲折蜿蜒。杜河在旧城墙下，数百步外，源源流过。这堵城墙，原是西班牙人所造，如今只剩下断壁残垣了。... (Zhejiang version)

Xu Jun said that whether from the perspective of faithfulness, expressiveness or elegance, (5b) and (6b) were better than (5a) and (6a), but the result of the questionaire showed that the first versions were more welcomed by the readers. This questionaire may well show that Chinese readers’ taste for foreignness should be satisfied.

A Spanish translation theorist Jose Ortega Y. Gasset comments:

It is clear that a country’s reading public do not appreciate a translation made in the style of their own language. For this they have more than enough native authors. What is appreciated is the inverse: carrying the possibilities of their language to the extreme of the intelligible so that the ways of speaking appropriate to the translated author seem to cross into theirs. The German versions of my books are a good example of this. In just a few years, there have been more than fifteen editions. This would be inconceivable if one did not attribute four-fifths of the credit to the success of the translation. And it is successful because my translator has forced the grammatical tolerance of the German language to its limits in order to carry over precisely what is not German in my way of speaking. In this way, the reader effortlessly makes mental turns that are Spanish. He relaxes a bit and for a while is amused at being another.” (Liu Miqing, 2001:508)

Judging from this, translators needn’t worry about the understanding and receptivity of their readers because they do have their reasoning and judging competence. In present translation what a translator should do is to introduce more of the foreign cultural elements to meet the needs of the reader and to promote the cultural communication between China and the world. In view of this, it is the author’s contention that current translation should adopt a foreignizing strategy.

As to retaining the cultural heritage of the original, Yang Xianyi points out that a translator should try his best to be faithful to the original. For Yang’s part, preserving the imagery of the original has always been his pursuit. He says he tries to be faithful to the core of Chinese culture, the spirit of Chinese civilization with faithful translation. We can see this from his translation of A Dream of Red Mansions in which he has made every effort to give full play to Chinese culture. Those English readers who want to know China will benefit more from his translation than from David Hawkes’s.

Some translators argue that we must adopt something that readers may “喜闻乐见” ( be glad to hear and read),but this doesn’t mean adhering to old ways by borrowing from the target language something familiar to the readers. In fact readers now like to know more that they are not familiar with and they always want to touch something quite new and alien. There is no need for translators to worry about the cognitive ability of readers. For example, when translating “一个和尚挑水吃，两个和尚抬水吃，三个和尚没水吃”, we can render it as “one monk, two buckets; two monks, one bucket; three monks, no bucket, no water--more hands, less work done.” but not just replace it with a ready English idiom “one boy’s a boy, two boys are half a boy, three boys are no boy”. Some may argue that “monk” is a Chinese culture-specific term and unable to be understood by westerners. But why do we Chinese people know 教堂,牧师and神父? There is a beginning to everything and if we never introduce our culture to others, it will never be accepted. It’s very harmful to substitute the Otherness with Ownness. Nord ( 2001:93) remarks “Deviation from convention also has its corresponding effects. The translator should by no means spoon-feed the target receivers. As a rule, readers do accept new, original or foreign ways of presenting old or new ideas. This is a major way to enrich the target language by transferring unusual language use.”

To avoid the loss and distortion of cultural features and also to enrich our language, translators should try their best to transplant foreign cultures into our language and at the same time to introduce our culture to the outside world in an acceptable way. For example:

(7) An’ after all her bring’-up an’ what I tol’ her an’ talked’ wid her, she goes teh d’bad. Like a duck teh water.

a. 我生她养她，叮嘱来嘱咐去，她还是去做那伤风败俗的事儿，就跟猫儿见了腥似的。

b. 我生她养她，叮嘱来嘱咐去，她还是去做那伤风败俗的事儿，就跟鸭子见了水似的。

(8) “The two gigantic negroes that now laid hold of Tom, with fiendish exultation in their faces, might have formed no unapt personifications of powers of darkness.(H.B. Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin)

这时，那两个高大的黑人把汤姆一把抓住，脸上流露出魔鬼般的喜悦神色（那模样活像是阎罗王再世）。

这时，那两个高大的黑人把汤姆一把抓住，脸上流露出魔鬼般的喜悦神色（那模样活像是撒旦再世）。

(9) This was a rag to the bull. He raged and.…

a. 这话简直是火上浇油，他勃然大怒…

b. 这话简直是朝着牡牛摇晃红布，他勃然大怒...

(10) “I bet you can’t spell my name,” says I.

“I bet you, what you dare I can,” says he.

“All right,” says I, “go ahead.”

“George Jaxon—then now,” says he.(Mark Twain:The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, ch.17)

“我敢说你准不知道我的名字是哪几个字，”我说。

“荞麦的荞，自治的治，清洁的洁，克服的克，孙子的孙—怎么样，”他说。

“G-e-o-r-g-e J-a-x-o-n—怎么样，”他说。

In the above examples, the first versions are domesticated. It may be easier for readers to understand them, but on the other hand readers are deprived of the pleasure and fun of reading something that is fresh and quite different from their own culture. And such translations have either become old cliche without any appeal and compact to attract the readers or even misleading like the eleventh example. Chinese translators used to replace English idioms with the ready-made Chinese idioms, for example, “as poor as a church mouse”, “as timid as a rabbit” and “to look for a needle in a hay stack” used to be rendered as “一贫如洗”, “胆小如鼠” and “大海捞针”. In fact, when reading a translated text, the reader knows that he is reading about foreign people and foreign things and that they are quite different from the people and things of his native culture, so he has made psychological preparations for “empathy” before his reading. The foreignized translations such as “穷得象教堂老鼠”, “胆小如兔” and “草堆寻针” are not only equivalent to the original but also very novel. Likewise, “Chinese flavored English” or “Sinicized English” sometimes may achieve special effectiveness. For example, we can translate “又要马儿跑得好，又要马儿不吃草” as “You want the horse to run fast and you don’t let it graze.”, no one will misunderstand it. Chinese idioms “龙蛇混杂” and “投鼠忌器” rendered as “Snakes are mixed up with dragons” and “Don’t smash a jade vase to catch a rat” may have some value in cross-cultural communication.

Foreignization is an effective way for the enrichment of the target language and culture, but there is no such thing as absolute foreignization. As is said above, foreignization contains two dimensions, one, foreignization in the linguistic presentation; the other, foreignization in the cultural connotation. Foreignization in the first sense is limited. For example, Chinese readers have accepted “上帝” or “黑色星期五”, but they may not accept the expression “浑身起鹅皮疙瘩” which is “be gooseflesh all over” in English. And it’s likely that Chinese people will never say “胃里有蝴蝶”( have butterflies in one’s stomach) when they feel nervous. This is because any language has its own conventional presentations which are inherent of its own. Translators in the May Fourth period introduced many western syntaxes as well as new lexemes into Chinese which caused certain degree of foreignization of Chinese language. Some adverbial clauses such as “when…”, “if…” were introduced into Chinese and the passive form came to be used more frequently and to a greater extent. But just as what Mr. Wang Li, a famous linguist said forty years ago that “Foreignization of Chinese language has covered nine tenths of its journey, even if in the future, there will be no wholesale westernization because discrepancies between the two languages are too great.” (Qin,2000:368-373) After the May Fourth period, some foreignized presentations and syntaxes are abandoned, for example, the long attributive clauses, because they can’t be absorbed by our language.

Lu Xun advocated taking in new presentations together with the new content and said that “On the one hand we should import as much as possible and on the other hand we should digest and absorb as much as possible…. Some may become ‘idiomatic’ to us but others may eventually be sifted out because of their ‘unidiomaticness’.”(Chen Fukang:297) New presentations can be borrowed but the translator must consider the receptivity of the reader carefully. Besides we should never mistake translation style for the foreignization in the sense of linguistic presentation. Si Guo, a famous translation theorist, once rewrote a passage from classical Chinese novel Hong Lou Meng in translation style in order to mock at it:

在看到她吐在地上的一口鲜血后， 袭人就有了一种半截都冷了的感觉，当她想着往日常听人家说，一个年轻人如果吐血，他的年月就不保了，以及纵然活了一个较长的生命，她也终是一个废人的时候，她不觉就全灰了她的后来争荣夸耀的一种雄心了。在此同时，她的眼中也不觉地滴下了泪来。当宝玉见她哭了的时候，他也不觉心酸起来了。因之他问：“你心里觉得怎么样？”她勉强地笑着答：“我好好地，觉得怎么呢？”……林黛玉看见宝玉一副懒懒的样子，只当他是因为得罪了宝钗的原故，所以她心里也不自在，也就显示出一种懒懒的情况。凤姐昨天晚上就由王夫人告诉了她金钏的事，当她知道王夫人心里不自在的时候，她如何敢说笑，也就作了一项决定，随着王夫人的气色行事，更露出一种淡淡的神态。迎春姊妹，在看见着众人都觉得没意思中，她们也觉得没有意思了。因之，她们坐了一会儿，就都散了。(Yu Guangzhong,2000:65)

Some people regard translationese as foreignized translation and a way to convey the foreignness of the source text. This is misunderstanding in fact. The aim of foreignization is to retain the cultural elements and absorb the fresh presentations but not to imitate the linguistic structure of the source language so as to create a foreignized Chinese. Translation style emerges when the translator is restricted by the yoke of linguistic form of the source language and incapable of expressing in a smooth and idiomatic way of the target language. Xu Jun’s questionnaire (see above) shows that some readers have even accepted translation style, however, this doesn’t mean such a style should be encouraged because it may harm our language. Suppose what we may feel when we read such translation like “我正在洗我的头.” and “我起床在上午8点.”?

Foreignization in the other sense, i.e., in terms of cultural connotation, is also limited to the receptivity of the target readership which of course is restricted by the recipient environment. For example, although Chinese look at sexual behaviour more open-mindedly than before, it is still difficult for them to accept very detailed and lengthy descriptions of it in the novel, so translators always adapt or leave out those descriptions in their versions.

Then what is the operational norm for foreignization in translation of the twenty-first century? There is no ready answer to this question and there can’t be a fixed criterion for it, either. Toury points out that any translator should operate according to certain norms of the target culture. But what is the norm? Toury (2001:55) defines it as “general values and ideas shared by a community as to what is right and wrong, adequate and inadequate, which instruct performance appropriate for and applicable to particular situations, specifying what is prescribed and forbidden as well as what is tolerated and permitted in a certain behavioural dimension.” This requires the translator to have cultural awareness, that is, he must know to what extent foreignization is allowed and practice it within the receptiveness of the reader.

A translator who has cultural awareness knows to compensate the cultural default for his reader. We know when producing a text, the text producer always doesn’t verbalize the informational items that are supposed to belong to the receivers’ horizon. The intended readers will fill the slots caused by cultural default according to the cues left by the signals in the text and the relevant schema in memory will be activated. An excess of presuppositions may present serious problems for the translator, though. Often the cultural gap between the amount of information presupposed with respect to source-text receivers may not overlap sufficiently, and then the target receivers can’t establish coherence between their background knowledge and the information given in the text. For example:

待他（冯云卿）回身要进去的时候，猛看见大门旁的白粉墙上有木炭画的一个拙劣的乌龟，而在此“国骂”左边，乌亮的油墨大书着两条标语—（Mao Dun, Midnight）

Although the text author doesn’t verbalize the relationship between “乌龟”and “国骂”,Chinese readers will immediately understand it because they all know that “turtle” is the symbol for the cuckold and to call a person a turtle is highly insulting. By reasoning, the relevant schema about “乌龟”and “国骂”in readers’ memory is quickly activated. But to westerners who only associate “turtle” with longevity and willpower, they can’t link their background knowledge of “turtle” to the new information “swearword”.

In this case, if no compensation is made for the translation, then unreadability arises. For another instance, if a translator renders the Chinese sentence “我属鸡。我从来不吃鸡。鸡年是我的本命年。” simply into “I was born in the Year of the Rooster. I never eat chicken. The Year of the Rooster will bring me good luck or bad luck.”, the reader may be somewhat confused, because he doesn’t understand what is “the Year of the Rooster” and why it will bring good or bad luck to a person born in this year.

Nida (2001:54) states “In any translation, there will be a type of ‘loss’ of semantic content, but the process should be so designed as to keep this to a minimum.”

In order to avoid ambiguity or unreadability of the translation caused by cultural default, compensation should be made. This involves primarily providing annotations. The following are the examples:

(11) The May-day dance for instance, was to be discerned on the afternoon under notice, in the disguise of the club revel or “club-walking” as it was there called.(Hardy: Tess of the D'urbeville)

譬如现在所讲的那个下午里，就可以看出五朔节舞的旧风以联欢会（或者像本地的叫法:游行会）的形式出现。（Annotation:五朔节舞：英国风俗，五月一日奏乐吹号，采取树枝，野花装饰门面，在草地上竖立五朔柱，围柱跳舞，并选举五朔后。此风古时极盛，现在穷乡僻壤仍举行。

(12)“难道这也是个痴丫头，又像颦儿来葬花不成？”因又笑道；“若真也葬花，可谓东施效颦了，不但不为新奇，而是更可厌。”（Cao: Hong Lou Meng）

“Can this be another absurd maid come to bury flowers like Taiyu?” he wondered in some amusement. “If so, she’s ‘Tung Shih imitating Hsi Shih,’ which isn’t original but rather tiresome.” (Annotation: Hsi Shih was a famous beauty in the ancient Kingdom of Yueh. Tung Shih was an ugly girl who tried to imitate her ways.)

In order to compensate cultural default, providing annotations may be a practical and effective way because it can help the readers to enrich their knowledge of the source culture. Some may argue that it may not be so convenient to read with annotations and too many notes will discourage the reader, but some cultural phenomena have to be explained to the audience or he will be at a loss. It is worth noting that after a certain period of time when the target readers have been exposed to such cultural phenomena, they will be familiar with them and there is no need for annotations. In fact this is the process in which a culture is introduced to a foreign culture. For example, several years ago, the translation “ 色拉” of the English word “salad” must be accompanied with the annotation “凉拌生菜食品”, but now we are so familiar with it that it’s unnecessary to provide any explanation. This is also the case with many loan words such as “丘比特”, “犹大”, “黑客”, “黑色星期五”, etc. In his translation of Liao Chai (聊斋), Herbert Giles provides many annotations and he says “As an addition to our knowledge of the folk-lore of China, and as a guide to the manners, customs, and social life of that vast Empire, my translation of the Liao Chai may not be wholly devoid of interest.”(Siguo, 2002:17)

The issue of domestication and foreignization is of great significance in ‘translating culture’which is now considered to be the core of translation. Yet we can’t take foreignzation for granted thinking it helps preserve the cultural identity or take domestication for granted considering it may facilitate the reader. Before we decide on our choice, we need to know the factors that may determine the adopting of the two strategies, thus a historical perspective about the issue may be of some use in solving the problem.

Having analyzed the correlation between the recipient environment and the two strategies used by translators in Chinese history with a descriptive approach, we are able to see that such social, cultural and political elements as ideology, ethical values, aesthetic standards and the internal need of a country are all the governing factors that may exert influence on the choice-making of the translator. This enables us to understand that translation is everything but a mere process of language transcoding during which the translator is reduced to the mere generator of utterances which would be considered ‘translations’ within such disciplines as Linguistics or Pragmatics. Translation, in fact, is always manipulated in the hands of a translator, who, by the judgment of the recipient environment of his society, decides what should be done with the source text. When he decides his culture more powerful than the source culture, he may domesticate the source text. If he considers his culture inferior to the source culture, foreignizing strategy may be employed. In this sense, any translation is historical and embodies the translator’s interpretation of the dialectic relationship between source and target culture. Therefore traditional value judgment may prove to be infeasible or ineffective for any historical translation. In retrospect, we see the flaws and deficiencies of translations done in the late Qing Dynasty and the May Fourth period, but those translations satisfied the requirements of their respective epoch and thus they are all valid translations in history.

Presently some translators favor Venuti’s ‘foreignizing strategy’ from the standpoint of anti-hegemonism and some argue for domesticating translation from the communicative perspective. This thesis, however, has explored the issue from a descriptive approach and argues that the recipient environment should be the primary concern of a translator in determining domesticating or foreignizing stra