For decades, translation theorists operated under the assumption that a translator's primary duty was to achieve complete transparency, effectively rendering their own presence invisible in the translated text to preserve the original author's voice. However, translation scholar Lawrence Venuti challenged this paradigm by introducing the concept of 'foreignization'—a strategy that deliberately retains culture-specific elements and unconventional grammatical structures of the source text. Venuti argued that rather than performing a seamless transfer of meaning, translation should highlight the linguistic and cultural differences between the source and target languages. By resisting the domesticating impulse to make a text sound completely natural to target readers, foreignization forces readers to confront the foreign origin of the text and acknowledges the translator's active role in shaping the cross-cultural encounter.
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
- ATranslation is a complex cross-cultural encounter that has evolved over decades to emphasize the preservation of the original author's voice above all else.
- Venuti's concept of foreignization reframes translation not as a transparent replication of a source text but as a process that should actively highlight cultural and linguistic differences.Answer
- CScholars argue that domesticating a text is the only effective way to make a foreign work accessible to readers of the target language.
- DForeignization has become the dominant method among modern translators because it is more popular with readers than transparent translation.