Domestication and Foreignization in the Process of Culture-Specific Translation: With Special Reference to English Translations of the Uprooted Trilogy by Martin Wickramasighe

Abstract

Translation is a form of cross-cultural interaction in addition to the information exchange process. Due to the cultural similarities and differences between source and target languages, cultural aspects are the first thing to look at in translation. Cultural differences between the source and target languages have proven to be a difficult nut for translators to crack due to the cultural gap or the lack of equivalence between them. Employing the appropriate translation techniques helps bridge this cultural lacuna. Translation theorists, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1813/1992) and Lawrence Venuti (1995) both proposed two translation methods namely Domestication and Foreignization which are ideal for culture-specific translation as they provide both linguistic and cultural guidance simultaneously. Based on this fact, the present qualitative study aims to determine the degree to which the translators used domestication and foreignization techniques to accurately translate Sinhalese culture-specific elements that appeared in the novels, Gamperaliya (1944), Kaliyugaya (1957), and Yuganthaya (1949) into English. Additionally, the study explores different culture-specific areas in the source texts, subcategories of domestication and foreignization as well as other different strategies used in accordance with Aixelá's (1996) translation procedures in the selected samples. For the purpose of classifying the data, the researcher employed Peter Newmark’s classification of culture-specific elements (2010). Collected and classified data is later analyzed as per the content-analysis method. Since this is a work in progress, the conclusions can only be drawn from the data that has already been gathered and examined. The findings indicate that limited universalization, naturalization, and deletion have been widely employed under domestication, whereas orthographic adaptation, linguistic (non-cultural) translation, synonymy, and extra-textual gloss have been frequently used under foreignization. In conclusion, domestication and foreignization have been combined in all three target texts, with a preference for foreignization.