Foreignization in another context: The Spanish and Japanese

Foreignization in another context: The Spanish and
Japanese translation of
“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”
Yuko TAMAKI
University of Wales Swansea, U.K.
Abstract/ Résumé
Cet article est basé sur ma these de maîtrise, dans lequelle j’ai entrepris une recherche centrée
sur les phénomènes de domestication et de transformation étrangère en traduction. Le premièr
peut-être considéré une violence ethnocenturique à l’égard du text étrangèr alors que le
second va dans le sens d’une pression ethnodéviante envers les valeures culturelles de la
langue destinante (Venuti 1995) et constitue une tendance prépondérante au sein de la culture
de traduction contemporaine (Pym 1996). Dans le but de verifier la validité de ces tendences
en traduction, cet article se concentrera sur l’etude d’un extrait de l’oeuvre de Lewis Carroll
Alice au pays des merveilles, ainsi que de sa traduction à la fois en espagnol et en japonais.
Keywords/ Mot-Clés
Foreignization, literal approach, Spanish, Japanese, eclectic methodology
I. Introduction
The present paper is an attempt to look at domestication beyond Anglo-American
translation culture in focusing on Spanish and Japanese translation and further investigate
another critical perspective of foreignization. The importance of this study derives from
its being, in all probability, the first attempt to describe two translations in two
non-English languages, through both a quantitative approach using computer-generated
statistics and a qualitative approach examining sensitive parts of the target text. An
illustration and investigation of the concepts will be carried out in the Spanish and
Japanese translation of the first three chapters of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland. The text is broadly categorized as literary translation but specifically as
translation of children’s literature, which raises further interesting issues in terms of
domestication, which will be discussed later in the section four.
Other researchers who advocate the significance of this type of study include Susan
Bassnett and André Lefevere. Bassnett points to the need for more investigation of the
193
acculturation process ‘that takes place between cultures and the way in which different
cultures construct their image of writers and texts […] and of what Venuti has called ‘the
ethnocentric violence of translation’ and much more emphasis on the politics of
translating (1998: 138). She explains this view in favor of promoting interdisciplinary
Translation Studies and seems to exclude a single linguistic approach such as looking at
sentence level. She accurately evaluates Venuti’s innovative approach to translation in
terms of investigating translation methods reflected in the texts as well as examining
comments and reviews as extra-textual factors.
Lefevere identifies ethnocentricity as one of several possible topics for further research.
He defines ethnocentricity as ‘the attitude that uses one’s own culture as the yardstick by
which to measure all other cultures’ (1992: 120). The purpose of ethnocentric translation
is to reconstruct the world in the ST in their image and to produce translations that fit the
target culture. He indicates the importance of investigating translation from texts to
contexts, by demonstrating historical examples such as the centrality of French culture in
Germany during the first half of the eighteenth century and the role the Chinese T’ang
culture played in Japan during certain historical periods before the tenth century (1992:
118). This view - at certain times certain cultures enjoy greater esteem than others - is
somewhat similar to Venuti’s background theory for foreignization.
There are other researchers who have already applied to their research domesticating
strategies. For example, Malmkjær (2000) has tested them in an English translation from
Danish by investigating textual features of additions, changes and retentions in the TT
and concludes that the translation made foreign settings explicit in order to avoid any
offence which might be caused by domestication. She demonstrates that a good deal of
‘covert domestication’ is evident in such areas.1 Paloposki and Oittinen (2000) challenge
binary concepts of domesticating and foreignizing translation, based on Finnish
translations from English. They conclude that two seemingly opposing strategies could
produce similar effects on the TT, confirming that the two strategies are not always binary
concepts.
The present paper begins by thoroughly examining foreignizing translation concept,
1
Malmkjær, Kirsten. ‘2. Høeg at home and abroad’ in K. Malmkjær, J. Milton, and S. Veronica.
‘Translation and Mass culture’. pp.248-52.
194 Foreignization in another context: The Spanish and Japanese translation of…