班级 _____英语083______学号__4号________姓名 __王宁______ 分数__________Cultural transfer in translation——a study of the Selected Modern Chinese Prose Writings translated by Professor Zhang Peiji.AbstractWith increasing contact between China and the Western world, a better understanding between the two cultures is of growing importance. During the process of intercultural communication, the distinctive features of culture may undoubtedly bring out both cultural exchanges and cultural conflicts. Although there may be different means by which the exchanges can be achieved and the conflicts smoothed over, it is translation that can be used as the most useful medium to serve both purposes.Since translation came into being, it has never been short of people‟s attention. Scholars formulate their own translation theories and standpoints from different angles; various schools have been established, the two major ones being the linguistic school and the cultural school. The theories of both schools are actually interwoven with one another. However, with the boom in cultural studies in the academic field, cultural theories in translation have attracted considerable interest on the part of scholars and have become the main research tendency.Susan Bassnett, one of the leading figures of the cultural school, thinks that translation should take culture as the translation unit so as to realize the functional equivalence between the SL culture and the TL culture. In the process of seeking cultural equivalence, the translator enjoys great freedom of creation. S/he can not only adopt a flexible method of rewriting, but also break with the literary form of the original. This concept of translation, taking a macro view of translation study and reviewing it from a brand new perspective the nature and function of translation, the translator‟s position, and the relationship between translation and culture, has greatly broadened the horizon of translation studies.Guided by the concept of cultural translation and borrowing the concept of “cult ural transfer”,this thesis endeavours to identify what exact cultural influences should be taken into consideration that are likely to have an impact on translation, and how a translator deals with these influences in the process of translation through studying the research datacollected from the Selected Modern Chinese Prose Writings translated by Professor Zhang Peiji. Based on this case study analysis, this thesis expects to gain deeper insights into the translator‟s attitude and motivation behind various choices in the translation process. This thesis holds that the translator enjoys subjectivity in translation and may employ every means to bring his subjective initiative and creativity into play so as to achieve the functional equivalence between the target culture and the source culture.Key words: cultural translation, cultural transfer, Zhang Peiji, translation methods, translator’s motivation1. Introduction1.1 General trend of translation studiesAs is known to all, the purpose of translation is to help people who speak different languages achieve smooth communication. Based on this very purpose, translation is required to render exactly the content of the original. So the traditional translation studies were generally source-text-oriented or author-oriented and regarded “faithf ulness”as the criterion of good or bad translation. This source-text-oriented translation view, which focused on the perfect rendering of the meaning of the source text, has long controlled the field of translation studies. And the critic may also judge the translation quality according to how close the translated version is to the original. In respect of the relationship between the source and the target text, the debate of translatability or untranslatability, literal or liberal translation emerged on all sides. Correspondingly, the translation criteria were in riotous profusion. Tytlor‟s “three principles”, Yan Fu‟s “three-cha racter principle”, Fu Lei‟s “si milarity in spirit”and Qian Zhongshu‟s “sublim ation”are the representatives of the traditional views.However, the traditional translation studies were generally restricted in the scope of the translator‟s “personal experiences and subjective feelings (Zhang Boran, Xin Hongjuan, 2005:1) ” without any theoretical support. It is since the second half of the last centurythat the study of translation theory has reached an all-time prosperity.During the past few decades, developments in the fields of transformational grammar, general and contrastive linguistics, semantics, information theory, anthropology, semiotics, psychology, and discourse analysis, etc.,.have exerted great influence on gen eral translation theory, enabling the discipline to broaden the areas of investigation. The traditionally debated dichotomy between literal and liberal translation has been replaced by various linguistically informed modern distinctions, like Nida‟s “for m al”versus “dyn amic” correspon dence, Catford‟s “for mal correspond ence” versus “text ual equivalence”, or Newmark‟s “se m antic” as opposed to “communicative” translation. In general, more attention has been paid to the translation process and greater emphasishas been placed on “equal response”on the part of the target language reader; certain translation problems are discussed and explained at the linguistic level; contrastive as well as inductive approaches are employed to study the language phenomena in translation. As Professor Shen Dan (1996:57) pointed out, “such new perspectives on the theoretical front as well as the fairly extensive developments in specific interlingual contrastive studies have promoted considerably the understanding and mastery of the nature and skill of translation”.In contrast, in practical terms, especially in literary translation, what the translator faces is quite different languages and different readers with different cultural backgrounds; he or she has to convey different literary and cultural information. So it is impossible to create the same text in translation as the source text. Language is the carrier of culture. Rendering the culture carried in one language into the language embedded in another culture involves not only the problems of large numbers of terms, vocabularies, unique lexical structures, grammatical norms, but also the culture existing in particular natural conditions and the human environment. The real translation process is actually a dialogue and communication between two different language and culture systems. The work of the translator is to build a bridge between these two cultures, one possessing both similarities and dissimilarities.From this point of view, linguistic theories have been greatly challenged by the field of translation studies in recent years. The limitations of the linguistic approach are criticized as nothing more than “the inter-lingual synthesis”(Fang Mengzhi, 2003: 37). Obviously, though the very basis of any written text is language, the process and product of translating a text from one language into another involve very much more than language. The situation called for some new theories and approaches.In the early 1970s, combining the best Prague Structuralism, British empiricism, German system theory, and the Belgium/Dutch descriptive studies, an exciting new international and interdisciplinary field emerged (Genzler, 2004: 45). In his essay “The Name and Nature of Translation Studies” (1988), James Holmes mapped out the structure for the new field as having three branches: theory, descriptive studies, and practice (Genzler, 2004: 45). During the 1980s and 1990s, translation studies developed primarily along the middle branch of Holme‟s model, i.e. the descriptive studies (Genzler, 2004: 46).Itamar Even-Zohar made great contributions to this field by proposing “polysystem theory” which has, according to Susan Bassnett, “changed the nature of translation analysis and led to the great expansion in the field that has come to be known as Translation St udies”(Liao Qiyi, 1997: 13). In polysystem theory, Even-Zohar mainly talked about the position of translation, as a subsystem of the larger one, in literary polysystems. In his essay The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem(1978),Even-Zohar suggested that the relationship between translated works and the literary polysystem should not be categorized as either primary or secondary, but as variable, depending upon the specific circumstance operating within the literary system.Based on polysystem theory, Gideon Toury attempted to develop a more comprehensive theory of translation. One of the goals of his study was to discover the actual decisions made during the translation process, through which he hoped to discover a system of rules governing translation in this particular polysystem. Toury found that most texts were selected for ideological reasons, while few choices were made based on aesthetic criteria. Satisfying target cultural background and translation principles, despite the changes in the texts and lack of concern with source text, translated text still functioned as translations. Toury (1980: 123) concluded that the reason for this general lack of concern of “faithfulnes s”to the source text was that the translator‟s goal was to achieve acceptable translations in the target culture. Toury put forward a view of “ta rget-oriented translation”,a research method emphasizing the relationship between the target culture, characteristics of the target culture, and the translation. To establish a hierarchy of interrelated factors (constraints) that determine (govern) the translation product, he proposed the term “translation norm s” (Gentzler, 2001:127). In terms of translation, norm means constraints imposed by social culture on the translation, i.e. it is mainly the target society and culture which directly influence translators‟ decisions.Translation is a kind of social activity which is closely related to society, culture, ideology and power structure, etc. The source text is created in a certain system, in which certain “nor m s”exist at every level, such as language, ideology, power relationship, etc. Similar to the source text, the target culture belongs to another system and takes on a series of its own “nor m s”that are accepted by its own readers. Translation is the impact between two different cultural systems. As the theoretical study of translation extended to the cultural system, the significant parallels and the sheer extent of the overlap between these two interdisciplinary fields have compelled many scholars of translation studies to take what has been term ed the “cultural turn”.The “cultural turn”first appeared in the 1980s. It did away with the limit of context, where translation was no longer regarded as an isolated fragment of language but as part of socio-cultural context. More attention was paid to the cultural root underlying translation itself, to discuss translation version‟s various cultural backgrounds such as politics, economy, society, ideology, etc. It not only broadened people‟s horizon, but also completed the theoretical basis of translation as an independent discipline.The 1990s saw the real breakthrough for the field of translation studies with a series of momentous collections edited by Susan Bassnett and Andre Lefevere. It was then thattranslation studies officially took the cultural turn. In the book Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation, they presented a strong case for moving the field of cultural studies closer to translation studies, arguing that “the object of study has been redefined, what is studied is the text embedded in its network of both source and target culture signs and in its way Translation Studies has been able both to utilize the linguistic approach and to move out beyond it (Bassnett & Lefevere, 2001: 123)”.They moved forward to go beyond language and focused on the interaction between translation and culture, on the way in which culture impacts and constrains translation, and on the larger issues of context, history and convention. In the essay entitled “Linguistic Transcoding or Cultural Transfer? A Critique of Translation Theory in German”,Snell-Hornby exhorted linguists to abandon their scientific attitude and to move from “text”to “culture”as a translation unit (Liao Qiyi, 2001: 382). Lefevere even saw translation as a kind of rewriting to study the power relations and ideologies existing in the patronage and poetics of literary and cultural systems.Following this trend, studies on cultural issues in translation and on the significance of translation toward culture have flourished. Awareness of such issues can at times make it more appropriate to think of translation as a process which occurs between cultures rather than simply between languages (Mark Shuttleworth & Moira Cowie, 2004: 35).1.2 The concept of cultural translationAccording to the concept of cultural translation of the cultural school, translation is a cultural communication activity, either intra-culturally or inter-culturally. In this sense, translation should take culture as the translation unit. Different texts have their own functions. Only by taking culture as the translation unit can the source culture achieve the same function in the target language as it does in the source language. Otherwise, functional equivalence cannot be achieved even by word for word translation.Functional equivalence is very much involved in cultural translation. However, it is quite different from the one that was put forward by Nida. The functional equivalence proposed by Susan Bassnett brings not only the source language text but also its functional equivalence in the target culture into consideration.Bassnett distinguishes four categorizations of the function of translation, namely promoting the development of culture; exerting influence on the acceptance and absorption of the target culture to the foreign cultural norms; advancing the comparative study of two languages; and improving the formation of the literary translation conventions both theoretically and practically (Gao Fengping, 2005: 81). Culture endows different source language texts with different functions. What the translator should do is try his or her bestto achieve the functional equivalence between the target culture and the source culture (Liao Qiyi, 2001: 363).Different features of the source text require different solutions to achieve th e functional equivalence. If the source text is meta-narrative text or the central-text which contains certain cultural beliefs, the translator should try their best to adopt literal translation methods (Bai Wenchang, 2002: 365 in Gao Fengping, 2005:81); Literal translation should also be used in scientific texts (Gao Fengping, 2005:81). However, if the source text is just general literature, the translatorhas great freedom in making his choices.Bassnett insists that the translator possesses great initiatives in the process of cultural equivalence. “The translator can rewrite the text flexibly, and can even break the literary form of the source text” (Bassnet t, 2002: 92).Directed by the concept of cultural translation, this thesis will discuss inter-lingual translation where cultural factors and their influence on translation are concerned, and the strategies and methods the translator may take to solve the problems that arise.2. A Brief Survey of Cultural Transfer2.1 Definition of cultural transfer“T ransfer”is a general term which has various meanings. First of all, it is understood in psychoanalysis as the interference of one language with another in the process of language learning. The application of “transfer”in the linguistic field has profited a lot from the American linguist Robert Lado. As it has been claimed by Lado (1957:2) that, “individuals tend to transfer the forms and meanings, and the distribution of forms and meanings of their native language and culture to the foreign language and culture—both productively when attempting to speak the language and to act in the culture, and receptively when attempting to grasp and understand the language and the culture as practiced by natives”. Ever since then, “language tran sfer” has become a central issue in the field of second language acquisition.In her work Language Transfer and Universal grammatical relations (1979), Gass first of all affirmed that “lang uage transfer does indeed take place”,and then pointed out based on her observation that, “some aspects of language are more likely to be transferred than others (e.g. elements that are perceptually salient or semantically transparent”(Gass,1979:7 in Susan Gass & Larry Selinker, 1992: 5).Work by Kellerman (1979, 1983), the representative figure who has studiedtransfer from the perspective of cognitive psychology, demonstrated Gass‟s claim. His focus had something to do with the principles involved in what he called the transferability of linguistic elements. He argued that “there are definite constraints on transfer which go well beyond mere similarity of the languages in question”(Susan Gass & Larry Selinker, 1992:7).By analysis of all the achievements in the previous studies and his own research findings in this field, Odlin, the famous American linguist, put forward the very often quoted influential definition of the term “trans fer”. According to him, “transfer is the influence resulting from similarities and differences between the target language and many other languages that have been previously (and perhaps imperfectly) acquired”. (Odlin,1989:27)Common to all the above scholars is their special attention paid to the similarities and differences existing between different languages and their interest in the constraints that may be imposed on the transferring process.The phenomenon of transfer attracts the interest of scholars from many other fields, the typical example of which is the academic field of cross-cultural communication. Sharing the same concern to all kinds of constraint elements existing in the inter-lingual communication as the field of the second language acquisition, the study of cross-cultural communication obviously goes further. Due to the participation of two language as well as two cultural systems, more attention is paid to various cultural factors manifested in various forms and situations. The term “cultur al transfer”is introduced to illustrate the “cultural interference caused by cultural diff erences”.(Dai Weidong & Zhang Hongling,2000: 2)People with different cultural backgrounds may often subconsciously allow their own cultural norms and value perspectives to govern their own thoughts and behavior and use them as criteria to judge those of others. In this sense, cultural transfer often leads to communicative barriers, misunderstanding and even hostility.Commonly recognized as a kind of cross-cultural communication activity, translation has much to do with cultural transfer. Early in 1954, the British linguist James Harris proposed a translation-type model in a generative framework with the purpose of helping solve some linguistic problems in second language acquisition; the model was called “transfer grammar”.His point was that, “whereas in a purely structural comparison of languages, many constructions and subdivings had no parallel,…we can find…on a translation basis---a parallel in one language to almost anything in the other” (Harris, 1954:267, in Susan Gass & Larry Selinker, 1992: 1). Though his emphasis was not on translation,there is clearly an implication for translation studies when translation was considered as a kind of decoding process from one language to another.Apparently, Marton, a linguist from Poland, shared the same view with Harris. According to Marton (1981: 69), “translation is indeed a typical activity of contrastive analysis and transferring influence. The process of translation is the process of exchanging the expressions and cultural elements in the source language to their accordance in the target language. The transferring function is brought about during this kind of contrast and exchange”.The above thoughts make sense to some extent. The can easily be seen in the remarks of Eugene Nida (2004: 4) when he claimed that “anything that can be said in one language can be said in another”.However, the problem in reality is that translation is never “the decoding of words or sentences from one language to another, but a complex form of action, whereby someone provides information on a text (source language material) in a new situation and under changed functional, cultural, and linguistic conditions, preserving formal aspects as closely as possible” (Mary Snell-Hornby, 2001: 37). Translation undoubtedly deals with two cultures, in addition to two languages. And differences between cultures may usually cause more severe complications for the translator than do differences in language structure in the process of translation.2.2 The forms of cultural transferBefore going directly to the discussion of all kinds of translation problems caused by cultural transfer, it would be quite necessary to distinguish different forms of cultural transfer so as to make the analysis more concrete and comprehensive.The categorization of cultural transfer is very much dependent on the categorization of culture. It is widely agreed that culture is a complex and subtle matter. So far, there is no one who has given a perfectly satisfying definition of culture (Liu Miqing, 1999: 3). Its complexity attracts the interests of scholars from various fields and it has been defined in different ways for different purposes. One of the oldest and most quoted definitions of culture was formulated by the British anthropologist, Edward Burnett Tylor (1871, in Dai Weidong, Zhang Hongling, 2000), in his Primitive Culture. According to Tylor, “culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws, customs and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of so ciety”(ibid: 2). In such a context, culture is in fact the combination of both the material and the spiritual wealth of our human society.Just as when efforts are made to define culture, the categorization of culture can be various. Some people categorize culture into five aspects: material, intellectual,communicative, institutional and conceptual. And some divide culture into main culture, subculture and counterculture (Jing Liao&Guoyuan Tu, 2004:17). Recently, in his project proposal entitled Communications and Culture Transformation---Cultural Diversity, Globalization and Cultural Convergence, the Spanish scholar Stephan Dahl (1998) clearly categorized culture into three layers: the surface layer, the middle layer and the deep layer (Liu Weidong, 2001:47). This thesis mainly depends on this way of categorization. As the most direct-viewing part in this categorization, culture in its surface layer refers to all kinds of human products, including language, food, architecture, clothes and all sorts of arts, etc. The middle layer evolves the social norms and values, ranging from personal relationship, institutional conventions to customs and behaviors, etc. The deep layer is also called conceptual culture. To be more specific, it is people‟s basic concept of life referring to thinking modes, traditions, psychology, religious beliefs, customs, aesthetic preference, etc. According to the analysis of Liu Weidong (2001:47), the cultural structure emanates from the surface layer to the middle layer, and then to the deep layer.To make it short and easier to analyze in translation, the structure of culture is simply divided into two layers: the visible social customs, habits, speech act and communication context in its surface layer and the norms, values and the basic conceptions, etc. in its deep layer. It should be noticed that cultural meanings, either in their surface structure or in their deep structure, are intricately woven into the texture of the language. Acting as the vehicle of culture, language symbolizes the cultural reality of human society. Every aspect of a nation is embodied in its language. People identify themselves and others through their use of language and view their language as a symbol of their social identity. Besides, the cultural value of a certain culture gestates its language system. Language and culture are actually inseparable, and are influenced by each other interactively.According to the above categorization of culture, cultural transfer can accordingly be classified into surface-structure cultural transfer and deep-structure cultural transfer. In terms of surface-structure cultural transfer, the language forms and cultural elements manifested in all kinds of communication events and speech acts would be the focal points of the study. This happens when people directly transfer rules of speaking or speech acts from their native language to the target language without considering the differen t communication rules between cultures.The deep-structure cultural transfer is closely related to the worldview of a nation or group, mainly involving people‟s ideas and thoughts whose influence on the speech act or communication is indirect and not distinct unless the language user knows both cultures well. That is why the participants concerned are still in the dark when misunderstandings and conflicts arise in communication. Though such psychological elements as aesthetic preference, ethical value, historical cultures and religious sentiments are not easilyperceived, they actually determine what people think, speak, and how they behave. Therefore, the problems caused by deep-structure cultural transfer in cross-cultural communication or in translation are more difficult to be noticed.3.A Case Study on the Translation Methods Adopted by Zhang Peiji in his W ork Selected Modern Chinese Prose W ritingsCultural transfer is challenging and complex. It exists in quite a number of respects. Translating is a culture-bound activity. It is because the existence of cultural difference that translating becomes a complex and painstaking process. However, it is this interference and these difficulties that call for a high demand on the translator‟s cultural competence and cultural attitude. The translator must have a good mastery of both the source culture and the target culture. Only when the translator has a clear and deep view of cultural difference can they employ proper strategies and appropriate techniques to deal with the problems. And only after they solve the problems brought about by cultural difference can the version be regarded as a success and the communication of culture be carried out. This chapter attempts to study Professor Zhang Peiji and his art of translating in his translation of Selected Modern Chinese Prose Writings in order to get some view of how he technically deals with all forms of cultural transfer in the selected works he has chosen to translate.3.1 Translation methods adopted to solve the problems caused by cultural transferBeyond a doubt, for decades, scholars coming across certain translating obstacles have proposed solutions to tackle the difficult matters accordingly. Obviously, there are various strategies and methods for different specific matters. Generally speaking, there are two major kinds of translations: literal translation and liberal translation. Literal translation is actually word-for-word translation which “follows closely the form of the source language.”Liberal translation is one “which“has the same meaning as the source language but is expressed in the natural form of the target language.” However, it is hardly possible for the version to achieve the closest equivalence to the source message if the translator consistently translates literally or liberally since the goal of the translator in translating linguistic or cultural items peculiar to the source language is to make the target language reader identify themselves as fully as possible with the readers in the source language context and understand as much as they can of the cultural customs, ideas, manner or thoughts, and history, etc. An effective way for the translator is to achieve this is to choose。
