Translation Studies and Theories

According to Munday and Hatim (2004: 3), the activity of reading has been growing phenomenally in the last few decades as the world continues to become more globalized. The impacts of translation are felt in many parts of the world as more advanced perspectives have been placed in a position to ensure moderate translation studies as well as linguistic and cultural evaluation. According to Venuti (2010), people with different races, ethnicity, sex and ages met at varying places all around the world. The countries that experienced high populations of immigrants are the developed countries in some parts of Europe and the United Sates. One of the impacts of immigration is that of cultural difference; it was fueled by different groups of people with varying believes and morals. Also, Baker (1998: 2) addresses issues relating to the authority that a translator should have. Moreover, he tries to show how important it is to improve the state of the translators who take most of their times trying to translate languages for the welfare of people. He argues that translators should be given a way in which they can base their studies for moderate and accurate results. However, according to Newmark (1988: 81), translation method and procedures differs a lot in both meaning and applications. To reveal the difference between the two, he quotes by saying while translation methods relate to whole texts, translation procedures are used for sentences and smaller units of language. Newmark main objective is to end the controversy that most people have relating to translation. He wants to make each point as clear as possible for better understanding. Then, Newmark (1991:10 to 12), uses the idea of communicative and semantic to explain translation; his emphasis on translation as being more or less communicative as well as semantic.

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Foreignization by Venuti/Berman

According to Venuti (1995: 33), foreignization and domestication form the strategies of translation. All depends with the translator and the extent at which he/she forms a word on a certain culture. Venuti (1995: 18) main aim was to contemplate the meanings of the two terms to find his ways of proving the controversy that befalls both of them about racism, ethnicity, and even imperialism. Cultural differences among people as well as the aspect of cultural identity forms the base of the challenges that face translation process as referred by Munday (2009: 11). As a result, various scholars generated interest of understanding and even evaluating translation studies.

Therefore, it was very hard to avoid the aspect of cultural differences if in any case one wants to review the meaning of the varying languages. According to Munday (2009: 179), the translation was not involving all the cultures in the world; it was a tight negotiation between two cultural groups in the whole world. Only two cultures; the superior and the dominant were involved in the negotiation. However, each culture had its followers and supporters that made the competition stiff and moderate in some ways.

However, much awareness was created in the understanding of the struggle between the two main cultures; the target and the source culture. Thus, Venuti (2004: 74 and 225) saw it interesting incorporating some of his proponents in the study of the cultural differences. As a result, Venuti came up with two strategies that he used to build up an idea in the translation concept; foreignization and domestication. The two strategies were met to reveal the distinction and show how translators allocate a translated word in the environment of a target culture and the significant language. According to Venuti (2009: 179), domestication was based on originality, fluency, and naturalness. They are the main priorities that relate to the written language in the target culture. Venuti main aim is to limit the linguistic choices that may come up in the translation process. Also, he wanted to reduce the cultural choices and thus putting more emphasis on originality. Since then, Venuti has continued to enlighten people with the knowledge of fluency and originality. He says that they are the main mode of translation. However, most places have adopted to the same point and especially in the Anglo-American culture where they are still clinging to domestication and originality of language. Venuti has also written various reviews and still insisting on the aspect of fluency. For instance, he discourages mixing of standards like that of American and British.

Unlike the domesticating translation, Venuti (2010: 75) refers to foreignization as a way of preserving the meaning of the target language by disrupting the expected linguistic. However, the author sees both strategies as a choice that a translator can make depending on his/her goals. Also, Venuti talks of discontinuities that alter the target language by using the marginal as well as the minority designs in the target language of the translator. Venuti (1998: 12) talks of a language being power in any culture or even a linguistic group. It is a power that binds people who have common norms, believes and virtues together.

While evaluating the aspect of the target language, Venuti (1998: 9) uses the form marginalization; it is formed that keeps the minority of variables within a minority location. As a result, Venuti emphasis on foreign words that relate to foreign cultures of people. Therefore, bringing all the languages together, evaluating the elements in each and coming up with a commonly translated text is the main challenge that Venuti tries to address. Lecercle (1990: 15) created an aspect of marginalization on minority position. However, Venuti utilized the term as the remainder; it was for the purpose of showing the foreignness of a converted text.

According to Fawcett (1998), the term has an element that is of importance in revealing the extent at which a text can be referred to as foreign. Also, the remainder was a challenge as its activation led to the resistant translation that was seen to have a great impact on communication as a whole. Moreover, regarding a translated text, resistant reading serves a greater purpose in keeping its otherness as well as the foreignness. It is thus the main point that Venuti emphasis laid on irrespective of him valuing a good translation.

Munday (2009) continues to argue that the essence of foreignization is a choice that clings to the side of the target language. Therefore, foreignization can be said to have no impact on the side of the recipient culture since it only occurs with the distortion of codes from the translating elements of the translating language. As a result, one can refer to the act of foreignization as that of affecting the target culture majority but at the same time having no impact on Venuti stance. He only wants to evaluate the position at which both the target and the source language holds in the translation process. Also, Venuti experiences some sort of controversies while trying to contemplate different perspectives of his ideas. First, he identifies the text choice in the target language as being a minority but also the same impact would be felt if the marginalized element is chosen from the target language.

To understand clearly what Venuti (2008: 16) means, it is important to evaluate how foreignization and mineralization relate in a translation context. A translation can relate with mineralization by the fact that it uses the form of the minority to create a text in the target culture and language. On the other hand, foreignization incorporates with translation by showing the otherness of a text. Therefore, it is good to understand each aspect correctly before making a distinctive conclusion or even a critique about Venuti works.

Also, a good translation must involve disruption of codes; foreignization. As a result, it leaves the choice of picking different strategies as a desirable action. Therefore, Venuti (2008: 18) continues arguing on good translation by relating both foreignization and domestication with ethics of translating a language. However, foreignization has a lot to do with both target and source cultures and to the reader. However, Fawcett (1998) argues on the same point of translation relating the source translation with a violent act. He says that for one to translate a language, there must be distortion or even the elimination of some words from the original language for the purpose of making it a new one. As a result, there is a large gap between the source and the target language due to the various changes that take place in each level. To some extent, there is need to follow some obligations when altering an original language. The same reasons force Venuti to raise questions relating to ethical measures and the value attached to the source language. Though there is need to conduct translation of language, it is also important to honor various obligations for the purpose of preserving the otherness of a translated text in the translation process. The obligation is directed to the translator who is required to maintain the identity in both the target language and the culture during the entire process of translation.

Moreover, Venuti supports the fact that translation has some ethical importance that need to be addressed to complete the process of translation from the source to the target without necessarily ignoring any of the sides. The fact that a foreign text enters the target culture with no signs of resistance proves the point of dominant discourse that yields a free from resistance integration of language in the target culture. Venuti (2008: 75) quotes by saying that In the revision or maintenance of the paradigms of the dominant culture, clinical practices that inform disciplines and professions in the recipient culture, as well as methodologies of research translation, enlist all the foreign text. Therefore, it is very easy to understand why Venuti incorporated both domestication and foreignization translation strategies in his study. Domestication translation would help in the maintenance of language structure while, for the revision purposes of the foreign structures, foreignization serves a great purpose.

However, other authors took the initiative of giving counter-opinions to the Venuti analysis. For instance, Shuttleworth & Cowie (1997:59) addresses foreignization as one of the translation strategies where language translators take the initiative of disconnecting the expected convention of the target language for the purpose of retaining the foreignness of the actual language. Therefore, Venuti (1995: 6) puts more effort on the statement by saying that Anglo-American culture forms translation when its reveals the originality of the text according to the reader. He wants the reader first to get the impression of the originality. However, most of the translation studies professions put more effort in analyzing the target language corpora. Gavioli and Zanettin (1997: 44) have taken the initiative of giving a clear insight of the translation process about the target language. The authors say that TL corpora have much importance to the translators as it helps them to understand each word that is incorporated in the target language. Also, Zanettin, Bernardini and Stewart (2003: 6), adds to the information of target language by saying that TL corpora have the potential of providing target language meaning in normal units. Also, they have the potential to give translators a chance to have an option of choosing to be natural.

Discourse analysis

In translation studies, critical discourse analysis plays a major role considering the literature and mainly novels in the internationalization. Due to its impacts, a need to translate various novel texts with the inclusive of mass media arose. In the process of translatio...