In my eyes, domestication refers to being closed to the readers, making the source text easier to be understood.It is more transparent and fluent.It minimizes the strangeness of the target text for the target language readers. We can see that “a lion in the way” can be translated into “拦路虎”. “lion” is the king of the animals in the western countries,but it is not like this in China.In order to make Chinese readers understand such a phrase, we can translate it into 虎 instead of 狮子。The same is true with “goose flesh”.It means 鸡皮疙瘩 in Chinese.
Foreignization refers to taking the target readers over to the foreign culture and feel the cultural and linguistic differences.For example, we have such an etiquette as磕头. In English, we call it kowtow.And we Chinese have 功夫,which is translated into kongfu.From this, we can see that foreignization helps maintain the identity of a culture and its language.
In conclusion, we should make a balance of domestication and foreignization, then make them coordinated to promote the transmission and exchange of cultures.
