Venuti’s Concepts of Domestication and Foreignization

Strategies of translation include both the selection of a text to be translated and the decision to choose a strategy of translation. Yet, the different strategies of translation may be “divided into two large categories: domesticating strategies, and foreignizing strategies” (Venuti,

“Strategies” 240). The first approach, namely domestication, is used to adapt the source text into the values prevailing in the target-language culture by enabling the translated text to support the canons, publishing trends, and political alignments of the target culture. The second approach, which is foreignization, is used when the translation of the source text resists the dominant domestic values of the target culture, restores the foreign characteristics of the source culture within the target text, and preserves the cultural and linguistic features of the foreign culture by deviating from the domestic values of the target readers (Venuti, “Strategies” 240).

Venuti bases his concepts of domestication and foreignization on the German theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar Friedrich Schleiermacher’s thoughts. According to Schleiermacher, a translator either “leaves the author in peace as much as possible and moves

the reader towards the author” or “leaves the reader in peace as much as possible, and moves the author towards the reader” (Venuti, Invisibility 19-20).

First of all, when Schleiermacher states that he “leaves the reader in peace as much as possible, and moves the author towards the reader”, he means that the translator translates the source-text in such a way that the reader does not have to exert much effort to understand the foreign implications in the translated source text; hence, the reader is at peace, for the rendered translation is close enough to the target-language culture (Venuti, Invisibility 20).

Schleiermacher’s view above forms the basis for Venuti’s concept of “domestication”. Venuti views domestication as “an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to target-language cultural values” (Invisibility 20). The term “ethnocentric” refers to “the attitude that uses one’s own culture as the yardstick by which to measure all other cultures” and an ethnocentric attitude

“produces translations that are tailored to the target culture exclusively and that screen out whatever does not fit in with it” (Lefevere 120). Therefore, domestication reduces the alien source text to the target language’s cultural setting. Hence, the translator takes the author to the reader’s home, and s/he compels the source text to fit the qualities of the target-language culture, so s/he translates the foreign text in such a way that the translation turns into a text which is compatible with the target readers’ consuetudinary expectations. Thus, the cultural items in the source text are mostly removed from the translation so as to protect the local colors of the target culture.

Then, Schleiermacher notes that the translator may leave “the author in peace as much as possible and may move the reader towards the author”. Here, he describes a mode of translation in which the reader is taken abroad to the author’s cultural milieu to explore the different tastes of that culture through reading the translated text. Here, the author is at peace within the surroundings of his or her own culture.

Schleiermacher’s perspective helps Venuti construct his concept of “foreignization”. According to Venuti, foreignization is “an ethnodeviant pressure on those values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text” (Invisibility 20). The term “ethnodeviant” points to

a method in which the translator tries to make the target-language culture come to terms with the source culture and to accept the foreign culture with all its differences. The target readers get acquainted with the principles of the source culture, or they are “sent abroad” (Venuti, Invisibility 20). Besides, since the translator does not confine herself/himself to the constraints of the target language and culture, the translated text preserves the source text’s estrangement effect. In other words, the strangeness of the source text is preserved in the target-language text;

thus, an “alienation, i.e. ‘an estrangement, a distancing’ effect” is created on the target audience (Abrams, Glossary 5). This effect is raised on the target readers in order to reflect them the common features of the society as if they were unusual, and to create emotional distancing in them (Abrams, Glossary 5). When the examples of domesticated and foreignized translations are to be displayed, world literature may set a precedent before us.

For domestication, firstly, the Italian writer Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose (1983) may be considered. The English translation of Eco’s novel was very welcomed by the American publishers due to “the sheer familiarity of Eco’s narrative to American readers fond of such popular genres as historical romances and murder mysteries” (Venuti, “Strategies” 241).

Secondly, another Italian novelist Giovanni Guareschi’s first translated novel into English, The Little World of Don Camillo (1950), illustrates a domesticating translation strategy. The eponymous protagonist of Guareschi’s novel is a priest, and he has some short “amusing” and

“ideological” arguments with the Communist mayor of the village; however, Camillo always becomes the prevailing party in the end (Venuti, “Strategies” 241). Therefore, Guareschi’s satirical approach to the Italian village life was greeted fondly by the Christian Democratic Americans due to the likeness of the novel’s theme to the Americans’ anti-Soviet stance of the Cold War Era (Venuti, “Strategies” 241).

Thirdly, Sigmund Freud’s “multi-volume English version of texts known as the Standard Edition (1953-74)”, which was translated into English through domestication, was highly appreciated by the Anglo-American readers (Venuti, “Strategies” 241). This appreciation was because of the fact that the translated texts of Freud introduced his method of psychoanalysis to the Anglo-American medical doctors and academicians of psychology, and enabled them to use this method widely during their practices.

As for foreignization, the translation of one of the American translators of the “Provençal troubadour poetry”, Paul Blackburn, may be exemplified first. “The Troubadours, the poets of Provence, in Southern France” gained prominence during the 11th and 12th centuries, and they benefited from the themes of courtly love and chivalry in their poems (Abrams, Glossary 48).

The reason why Blackburn is considered to have implemented a foreignizing strategy in his translations is that “his lexicon mixes the standard dialect of current English with archaism (to lie with), meaning “to engage in sexual intercourse”, colloquialism (in between, coming on), and foreign words (The Provençal)”, and the strangeness in his translation acknowledges the fact that his translation “is a translation produced in a different culture at a different period”

(Venuti, “Strategies” 244).

A second example of the foreignizing translation approach is Ezra Pound’s translation of “The Seafarer” (1922). “The Seafarer” is among “a group of ‘elegiac’ poems” of the Anglo-Saxon (or Old English) poetry dealing with the temporariness of the life on earth, and it is an exemplar of “the philosophical persona narratives, in which the comments of a stock figure, such as the exiled retainer, on the hardships of his life serve as the starting point for a consideration of human existence from a (…) perspective of (…) Christian expectation of salvation”

(Encyclopedia Americana 1: 848). Pound’s “translation strategy [in “The Seafarer”] is foreignizing in its foreignization values that prevail in contemporary Anglo-American culture – the canon of fluency in translation, the dominance of transparent discourse, the individualistic effect of authorial presence” (Venuti, Invisibility 36).

A third example where foreignization is employed as a translation strategy is Lawrence Venuti’s translations of the Italian poet De Angelis’s poems (Venuti, Invisibility 286).

Therefore, Venuti’s aim is to defy the controlling values in the culture of the target language in order to emphasize the difference of the foreign source-text in terms of its linguistics and culture (Venuti, Invisibility 23). Hence, Venuti calls this translation strategy foreignization due to the fact that it does not only eschew fluency but it also withstands the culture of the target language (Venuti, Invisibility 24). In this case, target-language readers feel that they are being alienated from their native language and culture during their reading processes. Thus, on the one hand,

“translators become nomad[s] in their own language, runaway[s] from the mother tongue”

(Venuti, Invisibility 291). On the other hand, readers are “free[d] (…) from the cultural constraints that ordinarily govern their reading and writing”, and foreign source texts are

protected against the threat of being domesticated due to the restrictions of target culture (Venuti, Invisibility 305). Moreover, according to Venuti, provided that the resistant strategy evokes an estranging translation, then the translated foreign text is also, in a way, liberated from the target-language culture. This liberation is achieved by making the reader of the resistant translation read a target-language text in which the cultural differences between the target language and the source text are obviously revealed (Venuti, Invisibility 306). What is more, foreignization makes different cultures come into contact with each other through translation, and it helps the source text keep its “otherness”; therefore, the target-text readers become aware of “the gains and losses in the translation process and the unbridgeable gaps between cultures”

(Venuti, Invisibility 306).

As a result, two basic concepts of Venuti, namely foreignization and domestication, prevail within the realm of translation. On the one hand, some literary translators make their translations more “accessible” to or “acceptable” by their readers through the use of domestication; on the other hand, some of them are less “motivated” in making their translations available to their readers in terms of cultural proximity; hence, they employ foreignization (Davies 72). Thus, the texts of foreign origin rich in culture-specific items can be translated in different ways with regard to the use of foreignization or domestication. Therefore, the next section focuses on various strategies which lie under the headings of domestication and foreignization.