Chinese Translation

According to Lefevere (1998:13-14), cultures are not likely to deal much with Others, unless they are forced to do so, and even when they do, they do it in ways of acculturation if (1) they see themselves as central in the world they inhabit, and (2) they are relatively homogeneous. Both conditions fit China in the late Qing period quite well.
As for the former, several millenniums of self-sufficiency had bred in intellectuals’ deep-seated self-esteem, which even survived the deep crisis: internal political and cultural deterioration on the one hand and the imperialistic incursions of European powers on the other. China’s eventual domination in the world represented the prevalent futuristic vision. Kang Youwei even composed a “Patriotic Song” with twelve stanzas, the eleventh of which runs as follows:
Only our country has the resources to achieve domination;
Who in the world is there to compete with us?
Fortunate am I to have born in such a great nation;
May our spirit and our Emperor reign long over us!
The last stanza concludes thus:
We’ll span all the five continents
And see the Yellow Dragon fly on every flag. (qtd. in Wang Xiaoming 46-47)
As for the latter, throughout Chinese history, up to the beginning of the 1820’s, the number of those who really participated in the literate culture was small: the Qing government limited both the producers and readers of literature to a relatively small coterie dominated by the court and the mandarins, and it also imposed its ideology and its poetics by making them part of the requirements to be met by those who wanted to belong to that coterie.
These factors, plus the emphasis on Chinese translation’s educational function, justify the current translators’ domesticating strategy, that is, “bringing the foreign culture closer to the reader in the target culture, making the text recognizable and familiar” (Schaffmer 1995: 4). The special attention given to the readers of the target texts is obvious and well-grounded:

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“Domesticating” and “foreignizing” here are two relative terms which can only be defined by referring to the formation of target cultural context. Using the foreignizing method cannot basically change the permanent trend of domestication in Chinese translation since
the “foreign” in foreignizing Chinese translation is not a transparent representation of an essence that resides in the foreign text and is valuable in itself, but a strategic construction whose value is contingent on the current target-language situation. Foreignizing Chinesetranslation signifies the difference of the foreign text, yet only by disrupting the cultural codes that prevail in the target language. (ibid., 20)
The scale from foreignization to domestication indicates a discursive stance, always loaded with ideological factors which bear on self-image and self-perception. Robyns distinguishes four basic stances, depending on whether or not the “otherness” of the foreign (and hence the identity of the self) is viewed as irreducible, and on whether or not the receptor culture adapts the intrusive elements to its own norms: (1) “transdiscursive” stance, assumed when one culture sees another as compatible and Chinese translation is not a cause for concern or alarm; (2) defective stance, assumed when a culture reckons it lacks something which is available elsewhere and can be imported; (3) defensive stance, assumed when a culture wards off imports and tries to contain their impact because it feels they may threaten its identity; and (4) imperialist stance, assumed when a culture only allows imports if they are thoroughly naturalized because it takes the value of its own models for granted (Hermans 1999: 89).
Chinese translation in the late Qing period featured the frequent use of domesticating strategy, yet went to foreignizing strategy at its end. Behind this is the dazzling spectrum reflecting the functioning of a variety of factors within and without China: the change of power differentials (patrons), the focus of learning from the West, and the aggregation of invasions inflicted on the country. Chinese translation during that time is truly an index. The hybridity of fiction Chinese translation incarnates multi-faceted confrontation: quality vs. quantity, the aim of the elite vs. the taste of the mass, wenyan vs. baihua, canonized literature vs. marginal literature, the influence from outside vs. the Chinese tradition, reform vs. convention, and entertainment vs. enlightenment.

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Those who can barely read may not read the Classics, but they all read fiction. Hence, the Classics may not affect them, but fiction will. Orthodox history may not affect them, but fiction will. The works of philosophers may not enlighten them, but fiction will. The laws may not regulate them, but fiction will. (qtd. in Wang Wong-chi 1998: 106)
Their choice of fiction was further justified by the reformists’ conviction that fiction helped greatly the political development of Europe, America, and Japan. They claimed that in the Western philosophers and statesmen gave their time to writing novels in the line of duty, to guide, inform and educate—and their success was easy to see as Europeans and Americans had colonized the world. As Lin Shu wrote in the preface to his translated version of Dicken’s Oliver Twist:
One hundred years ago, English misrule was no better than Chinese today, except for the fact that the English had a powerful navy. In his novels Dickens did his best to expose social abuses in the underworld to call the government’s attention to them, so that reforms might be introduced—-then, English authorities listened to advice and carried out reforms. That is why England has become strong. It would not be difficult for China to follow her example. Much to our regret, however, we have no Dickens in our midst, no one who can write a novel to make the authorities aware of the social abuses in our country. (qtd. in Wang Zuoliang 1981:11)
Zohar outlines three social circumstances in which Chinese translation may maintain a primary position: (1) when a literature is at its developing stage; (2) when a literature is marginal or feeble or both; (3) when a literature contains a vacuum or finds itself in a state of crisis or at a turning point (Gentzler 1993:116). As for the novel, three condition emerged in the late Qing period: it was marginal: the traditional novel was ranked low in the Western literary system; it also contained a vacuum when utterly debased by the reformers who advocated revolution in fiction; it was at its developing stage since the reformers advocated the formulation of the “new fiction.”
3.2 The discursive strategy in Chinese translation
An ideal Chinese translation is traditionally viewed as a perfect integration of two different texts in two cultures. According to Qian Zhongshu’s notion of sublimation (huajing), it brings about a transparent foreignness without any strangeness when there disappears the mist of alien modes of thinking, speaking, and feeling associated with the source text. However, due to the asymmetry in cross-cultural communication, the translator “either leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him; or leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him” (qtd. in Venuti, 1995:18). Venuti would define these as (1) a domesticating method, namely, an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to target-language cultural values, bringing foreign culture closer to the reader in the target culture, making the text recognizable and familiar; and (2) a foreignizing one, an ethnodeviant pressure on those values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, taking the reader over to the foreign culture, making him or her see the difference.

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Unlike Venuti, who obviously has the political agendas of challenging the hegemony of the Anglo-American culture and improving the status of translators, Chinese scholars argue for yihua just to show their enthusiasm for learning from other cultures, especially the West.
In China many people advocate that a strategy of “foreignization first and domestication second” should be adopted in English-Chinese translation (Sun Zhili, 2003:48), while in Chinese-English Chinese translation, “domestication should be used as much as possible” (Xu Jianping et al, 2002:36).
In recent years, most Chinese scholars use “domesticating” and “foreignizing” for their English Chinese translations of guihua / yihua, and some quote from Venuti (1995) in their discussions. What must not be forgotten is that domestication as much as possible in Chinese translation into English and the foreignization-first strategy in English-Chinese translation might be exactly what Venuti is against. One should never just take Venuti’s terms and forget the contexts in which they are used and the purposes they serve.
Context plays a significant role in the justification and determination of Chinese translation strategies. For example, archaism is seen as guihua or domesticating in Chinese discussions but foreignizing in Venuti’s. For Venuti, archaism results in historical remoteness but this is not necessarily the case in Chinese translation. Since the classical dialect is actually pure Chinese, while modern Chinese is heavily influenced by European languages, the use of archaism in Chinese translation means return to traditional Chinese values, which is surely domesticating.
“People [in China] tend to understand the new Western Chinese translation terms from their own perspective and translate them into traditional Chinese terminology. In consequence, the introduced foreign theories become deformed, are domesticated by traditional Chinese theories and cannot possibly enlarge the views of the Chinese scholars. ….”(Lin Kenan, 2001:14) Equating guihua/yihua with domestication/foreignization is a case in point.
An increasing number of Chinese scholars opt for “domesticating” / “foreignizing” for their English Chinese translations of guihua/yihua and quote Venuti to justify their argument for foreignization in English-Chinese translation. But one must not forget that the Chinese discussions of guihua/yihua are similar to the old literal/free debates; guihua/yihua and domesticating/foreignizing have different origins and meanings and are used in different contexts for different purposes. One must never confuse a traditional discussion of Chinese translation methods with political Chinese translational theory.

Chinese translation:www.sytra.cn/

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Second, yihua involves respect for the source cultures in Chinese translation, while Venuti does not advocate indiscriminate valorization of every foreign culture or a metaphysical concept of foreignness as an essential value. To him, the foreign text is privileged in a foreignizing Chinese translation only insofar as it enables a disruption of target language cultural codes, so that its value is always strategic, depending on the cultural formation into which it is translated (p.42) “Hence, close Chinese translation is foreignizing only because its approximation of the foreign text entails deviating from dominant domestic values”(p.146). This seems to contradict the common Chinese assumption that foreignization is always a means of respecting the cultural others.
Third, guihua / yihua refer to specific Chinese translation methods only, whereas domestication / foreignization involve the careful selection of texts to be translated as well. Foreignizing translators choose texts that “challenge the contemporary canon of foreign literature in the target language,” and “the choice of a foreign text for Chinese translation can be just as foreignizing in its impact on the target language culture as the invention of a discursive strategy (p.186)”.
Lastly, yihua means close adherence to the linguistic and cultural features of the source texts alone. Foreignization also involves use of non-standard target language, as is further explained by Venuti in his email1 to a Chinese postgraduate student named Ma Jia (Eddie) on December 2, 2002.
In this letter, Venuti said that foreignization can take a number of different forms. Close adherence to the foreign text is one, and retaining cultural markers is another. The most decisive way, however, may well be producing a variation on the current standard dialect of the receiving language. Variations here mean regional and social dialects, archaism, jargons and technical terminologies, stylistic innovations and neologisms, literary figures like metaphors. It can also be achieved through the choice of a foreign text for Chinese translation translated fluently or in the current standard dialect.
In other words, for Venuti, foreignization means selecting a foreign text that is marginal in the target culture, but translating it in a fluent way (similar to guihua); or choosing a foreign text that is canonical in the target culture, but translating it with marginal discourse. Marginal discourse here includes adherence to source language form and retention of source cultural elements (similar to yihua) as well as the use of non-standard target language. The opposite is true of domestication.
The above comparison reveals that domestication/foreignization focuses on whether the Chinese translation deviates from and challenges the target culture values, while guihua and yihua concentrate on retention /deletion of the source language/culture features. The former includes the selection of texts to be translated while the latter refers to the Chinese translational activity per se. The two pairs of terms overlap, but are not the same.

Chinese translation: www.sytra.cn

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Second, yihua involves respect for the source cultures in Chinese translation, while Venuti does not advocate indiscriminate valorization of every foreign culture or a metaphysical concept of foreignness as an essential value. To him, the foreign text is privileged in a foreignizing Chinese translation only insofar as it enables a disruption of target language cultural codes, so that its value is always strategic, depending on the cultural formation into which it is translated (p.42) “Hence, close Chinese translation is foreignizing only because its approximation of the foreign text entails deviating from dominant domestic values”(p.146). This seems to contradict the common Chinese assumption that foreignization is always a means of respecting the cultural others.
Third, guihua / yihua refer to specific Chinese translation methods only, whereas domestication / foreignization involve the careful selection of texts to be translated as well. Foreignizing translators choose texts that “challenge the contemporary canon of foreign literature in the target language,” and “the choice of a foreign text for Chinese translation can be just as foreignizing in its impact on the target language culture as the invention of a discursive strategy (p.186)”.
Lastly, yihua means close adherence to the linguistic and cultural features of the source texts alone. Foreignization also involves use of non-standard target language, as is further explained by Venuti in his email1 to a Chinese postgraduate student named Ma Jia (Eddie) on December 2, 2002.
In this letter, Venuti said that foreignization can take a number of different forms. Close adherence to the foreign text is one, and retaining cultural markers is another. The most decisive way, however, may well be producing a variation on the current standard dialect of the receiving language. Variations here mean regional and social dialects, archaism, jargons and technical terminologies, stylistic innovations and neologisms, literary figures like metaphors. It can also be achieved through the choice of a foreign text for Chinese translation translated fluently or in the current standard dialect.
In other words, for Venuti, foreignization means selecting a foreign text that is marginal in the target culture, but translating it in a fluent way (similar to guihua); or choosing a foreign text that is canonical in the target culture, but translating it with marginal discourse. Marginal discourse here includes adherence to source language form and retention of source cultural elements (similar to yihua) as well as the use of non-standard target language. The opposite is true of domestication.
The above comparison reveals that domestication/foreignization focuses on whether the Chinese translation deviates from and challenges the target culture values, while guihua and yihua concentrate on retention /deletion of the source language/culture features. The former includes the selection of texts to be translated while the latter refers to the Chinese translational activity per se. The two pairs of terms overlap, but are not the same.

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2. Different referents for the two pairs of concepts
Early discussions and a large percentage of present-day talks about yihua/guihua were not very different from those about literal/free Chinese translation. Lu Xun (1935), the first one to talk about guihua in Chinese translation, did not define the term, but gave the example of a Japanese translator whose Chinese translation was close to paraphrase. (in Luo Xinzhang, 1984:301) Liu Yingkai (1987/1994:269-282), the initiator of the Chinese guihua/yihua debate since the 1990s, said that guihua means changing the ‘guest’ source language into idiomatic ‘host’ language so that the Chinese translations look familiar and sound fluent, without any feeling of strangeness. It is the extreme form of free Chinese translation, including the over-use of Chinese idioms and archaic Chinese expressions, of paraphrasing source cultural images, replacement of the source language idioms with Chinese substitutes, and unjustified change of no metaphors into metaphors. To Sun Zili (1996: 45-6), guihua refers to “the change from idiomatic source language to idiomatic target language” while yihua means “adoption of new words and expressions from the foreign works.” The definitions of Liu and Sun are not very different from how people understand literal/free Chinese translation. And Zhu Zhiyu (2001:4) claims explicitly that “literal Chinese translation generally belongs to foreignizing and free Chinese translation may be said to be domesticating.” In recent discussions, some people say that guihua/yihua involve cultural treatment while, literal/free Chinese translation, linguistic factors alone. But it may be difficult to say that translating with the latter methods does not involve cultural problems.
For Venuti (1995:20), the domesticating method is “an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to target language cultural values, bringing the author back home.” It is closely related to fluent Chinese translation, which is written in current, widely used and standard English. It is immediately recognizable and intelligible, “familiarized” and domesticated. In short, standard target language rather than a variation is used.
Foreignizing Chinese translation practices entail the choice of a foreign text and the invention of Chinese translation discourses. A foreignizing translator can use “a discursive strategy that deviates from the prevailing hierarchy of dominant discourses (e.g. dense archaism), but also by choosing to translate a text that challenges the contemporary canon of foreign literature in the target language”. (p148; p310) Venuti cites Pound, Newman and himself as examples of foreignizing translators. Archaism seems to be a major feature of this strategy. (p195).
Venuti’s concepts of domestication and fluent Chinese translation are similar to the Chinese concept of guihua, but foreignization and strangeness obviously differ widely from yihua.
First, yihua refers to faithfulness through retention of the linguistic and cultural features of the source texts, while for Venuti, unfaithfulness to the source text is also a kind of foreignization. For example, he claimed that his own foreignizing English version of De Angelis’s poem has not only challenged the dominant aesthetic in the Anglo-American culture, but has also deviated from the Italian text in decisive ways. Certain features of the syntax in his Chinese translation make it stranger than the Italian source text. (pp. 291-2)

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Since Chinese translation scholars were already talking about guihua/yihua before Venuti (1995) and they used different English terms, we can conclude that, though both assimilation / alienation and domestication / foreignization are employed as the English renderings for the Chinese guihua/yihua and people in recent discussions tend to replace the former with the latter, early Chinese discussions were not under the direct influence of Venuti.
The appearance of the guihua/yihua discussion in Chinese translation circles is the result of several factors. First, China’s policy of opening to the outside world and people’s changed attitudes towards other cultures aroused intense interest in learning from the West. In Chinese translation, this means a demand for the retention of more foreign elements, both linguistic or cultural. Second, ‘the enthusiasm in culture’ in Chinese academic circles in the 1980s and its introduction into foreign language studies in the early 1990s bring about more concern for cultural elements in Chinese translation. The discussion of zhiyi/yiyi (literal/free Chinese translation) changed into that of guihua/yihua because, for some people, the latter involve cultural factors. There is an increasing demand for respecting the foreign cultures in Chinese translation into Chinese. Third, for some people, scholarly creativity lies partly in the coinage or use of new terms. The heated philosophical debates on alienation (yihua) in the 1980s (Gu Zhengkun, 1998: 20) offer a fashionable term for Chinese translation scholars to borrow from. This is evidenced by the fact that in some discussions nothing is new except the terminology.
Venuti said that domesticating strategies have been implemented at least since ancient Rome, when Chinese translation was a kind of conquest, and translators into Latin not only deleted culturally specific markers but also added allusions to Roman culture and replaced the names of Greek poets with those of their own, passing the Chinese translation off as a text originally written in Latin. A foreignizing strategy in Chinese translation was first formulated in the German culture in the early 19th century by Friedrich Schleiermacher. (in Baker, 1998: 240-244) It has recently been revived in the French cultural scene characterized by postmodern developments in philosophy, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, and social theory that have come to be known as ‘poststructuralism’ (Venuti, 1995: 20)
In short, foreignization and domestication are Venuti’s coinages based on his investigation of Western Chinese translation history and theories. The Chinese debates over yihua and guihua are the extension of the literal/free discussions in the 1920s-30s. Guihua is a traditional Chinese term, and yihua is borrowed from the Western philosophy. They are not loan words from Lawrence Venuti.

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Foreignization and Domestication

Abstract: The debate on foreignization or domestication is still heated in Chinese Chinese translation circles. Analysis reveals that the terms used by Chinese scholars and Venuti look the same, but actually have different origins and meanings and are used in different contexts for different purposes. They are simply not discussing the same thing.
Key words: foreignization, domestication, comparison, terminology

The debate over whether Chinese translation should be source- or target-oriented has recurred from Cicero to the 21st century and has again been a focus of discussions in China in the last decade. This paper attempts to make a comparison between ‘foreignizing /domesticating’ and yihua/guihua, the two most popular pairs of words for describing the translator’s divided loyalties in English and Chinese.

1. Different sources for foreignizing/domesticating and yihua/ guihua
Currently, most Chinese scholars use foreignization /domestication as their English renditions for yihua/guihua. Does the Chinese debate originate with Venuti (1995)?
A historical review shows that Lu Xun used the term of guihua (assimilation or domestication) in talking about Chinese translation as early as 1935. And the word yihua is already included in Dictionary of Modern Chinese published in 1978 and reprinted in 1991. This means that the two terms are not recent loan words from the West. Then what’s the English for yihua/guihua when they are used in Chinese Chinese translation discussions?
Our search in the three volumes of An Index to the Articles on Foreign Language Studies (1949-1989), (1990-1994), (1995-1999) demonstrates that the first Chinese Chinese translation research paper with the word yihua in the title was Guo Jianzhong (1998)’s “Cultural Factors in Chinese translation: Guihua and Yihua”, published in the 2nd issue of Foreign Languages, 3 years after the publication of Venuti (1995)’s The Translator’s Invisibility in which he coined the words of foreignizing and domesticating. But Guo’s English Chinese translations for yihua and guihua are “alienation” and “adaptation”, although Guo quoted the concept of ‘resistant Chinese translation’ from Venuti (1991)’s paper “Chinese translation as a Social Action” presented at a conference at the State University of New York, Binghamton.
Search on the Net of Chinese Academic Journals with “yihua” as the key word shows that in 1994, Wang Bingqin (1994:45) used the terms yihua/guihua to comment on the Chinese translation of the Bible from Russian to Chinese, though these words did not appear in the title of his paper. Guihua/yihua was also one of the ten Chinese translational paradoxes in Sun Zili’s (1996:45-6) paper. Sun did not quote any foreign author while Wang, a Russian professor, didn’t list any cited work at all.

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