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Travel from Home to Home

Author: FuBaiYu
Tutor: LiuJunPing
School: Wuhan University
Course: English Language and Literature
Keywords: "Traveling Theory" travel of texts reception of texts receiving culture
CLC: H059
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2005
Downloads: 82
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Abstract


In human history, travel has always been the trope of many uncanny experiences. Generally speaking, travel is the movement between geographical locations and cultural experiences. Travel is motion that stands for an open attitude. Eric Leed categories travel into three parts: departure, passage and arrival.Edward Said’s initiated his "Traveling Theory" in The World, the Text and the Critic published in 1983. Here theories are endowed with subjectivity and become the agent of travel. Theories travel in four steps. To start with, the first stage is the departure of theories from a point of origin. It is then followed by a distance and passage transversed from an earlier point to another time and place. The third stage leads to a set of conditions of acceptance. Finally the accommodated theories are to some extent transformed by their new uses. This trajectory of travel can be found in George Steiner’s hermeneutic motion of translation. Yet his starting point of analysis is from the receiving culture, with translators as one of the components. Drawing on the essence of the two theories inspires the author to think that travel of texts corresponds to travel of theories, for texts and theories are both crystallization of ideas. Texts are constantly selected, transformed by the receiving culture and finally incorporated with it. Yet texts cannot travel for their own sake. There must be a stimulus that pushes the travel to move on, and further more, determine the direction of this movement. The departure, passage and arrival of texts travel; or else, the fate of texts is intimately related to the stimulus. In the author’s view, the stimulus is receiving culture, including social expectations, translators and target readers, etc. The means of transportation, or the vehicle of travel, undoubtedly, is translation.This paper aims at elaborating on the travel of texts and the important role assumed by receiving culture in that travel experience within this theoretical framework. In the introduction part, the author makes a comparative study on the nature of travel and translation and concludes that translation is an intertextual travel. This comparison not only forms a connecting link between the preceding and the following, but also provides legitimacy for the discussion in the following chapters.Chapter Two expounds the departure of texts travel from three aspects: why, where and how do texts depart. Translation that is intrinsically mobile reinforces texts’ survival and empowers cultural development. It initiates the transaction that stems from the need of host culture by inviting and selecting texts from the guest language. What kinds of texts will be selected at a particular historical moment is hinged on the social expectations. The motivation of travel, however, is to bring outlooks and insights. In Chapter Three, the author observes translators’ interpretation of texts in a passage. Starting from the basic fact of de-contextualization and re-contextualization of texts, she raises doubt on the presumed "originality" of texts and points out that we should be keenly aware of the journey between the point of departure and arrival. This passage is rightly defined as a "contact zone" fraught with temporal and spatial differences. It becomes the very site of cross-cultural encounters. Translators are regarded as cultural negotiators and given an intervening voice in this passage. The dialogue can be achieved only when there is mutual recognition. They invade, extract and bring home the significance carried by texts. The author proves, by illustrating examples of translations, that the texts go through transformation in order that they can be better accepted by the foreign culture. Chapter Four elaborates on the arrival of texts travel. Texts find their new "home" after they are transplanted in a new land. They draw nutrition from the new land, get rebirth by their new uses and consequently, the innovation of receiving culture is as well boosted. The "reciprocal recognition" is the representation of win-win exchanges that are mutual beneficial. It is noteworthy, however, that travel never stops at a finite point; it follows a circular route. Hence "home" of texts becomes a mobile notion. In the last chapter, the author packs up the above analysis and raises some afterthoughts about characteristics of travel in a modern sense.The discussion in this paper does not end at the simple representation of the trajectory of texts travel. In fact, the analysis of three parts of texts travel represents the author’s understanding about the flux state of texts. The practical significance of this analysis is that it confirms some ideas of translation studies, for example, the problematization of "originality," the disrupting dichotomy of "center" and"periphery," cultural contact and host culture’s acquisition of legitimacy. What’s more, it believes that the booming translation studies suits the need of cultural development nowadays. The world we are living now is becoming increasingly connected but not homogeneous. Therefore translation can no longer be regarded as the inferior copy of authentic "original" texts. Instead, the power wielded by translation is elevated as never before. The responsibility carried out by the translation nowadays, is to make possible the conciliatory and sharing consequence of texts travel in order to push the mutual complement and accommodation of diversity of cultures.

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CLC: > Language, writing > Linguistics > Translation Studies
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