模因与翻译探微(英文)

Abstract: The term “meme” was put forward first by an animal science expert Professor Richard Dawkins in 1976. At present, meme has been popularly accepted in culture evolution field to explain a lot of theories and phenomena, especially that about language. Meme is a basic unit of culture and can be copied and spread, therefore, meme has a close relationship with translation. This paper introduces meme from its definition, features and periods of its reproduction. It researches the relationship between meme transmission and translation. With domestication and foreignization as research cases, this paper demonstrates the important influence of meme on translation strategies. Meme is a new standard for the long-lasting debate on domestication and foreignization in translation field.

Key words: Meme; Translation; Domestication; Foreignization

摘  要：“模因” 一词最早出现于1976年，首先由一位动物学家里查德•道金斯提出，现在已被广泛用于文化领域，用来解释语言界许多理论和现象，受到语言专家的青睐。模因是文化的基本单位，可以被复制和传播，模因的传播与翻译有着密切的关系。本文从定义、特征、复制阶段等详细介绍了模因，探讨了模因的传播与翻译的关系，用归化和异化两种典型的翻译策略为研究案例，表明模因对于翻译策略的运用的重要影响。翻译界长期以来对归化和异化的讨论又有了一个新的衡量标准。
关键词：模因；翻译；归化；异化

Introduction
Memetics has attracted great attention in western countries and in China in recent years. Memetics is a theory of memes, which was first put forward by Professor Richard Dawkins in Oxford University. He defined it as a basic unit for culture evolution, for it transfers from one person’s brain to the others’. After that, in her book The Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore further advanced the operation system for meme similar to gene, that is, memes, selfishly and hard, are always trying to enter into another person’s mind, another book and another partner and finally form our cultural and mental structures.[1] Therefore, the nature of memetics is effective understanding to the way for culture’s spreading and its system. It is just the function of meme that forms the native culture and at the same time, promotes the transformation and communication between different cultures, forming tans-culture. When people translate the culture from one country to another country, the awareness of the mechanism and function of meme’s trans-culture spreading has been starting. So, if we discuss translation from the perspective of memetics, it will be better for us to master the trans-culture nature of translation.
The reason why memetics is so popular is that it can be used to explain a lot of theories and phenomena in cultures. It can be connected with many aspects in linguistics. Translation memetics is a good example for memetics’ usage. This paper is divided into three parts. First, the author makes an introduction to meme from the aspects of definition, features and the periods of its reproduction. Then the author explains translation meme and researches the relationship between meme transmission and translation. Meme’s trans-culture spread is such a course in which the translator decodes the original memes in the source language and tries to code them in his own way of understanding. The principle he/she must abide by is trying to be faithful to the writer and trying to copy the original text in greatest degree. Then, the author introduces two translation strategies: domestication and foreignization, then discusses the importance of meme to translation strategies. Meme is very helpful to explain the different application of domestication strategy and foreignization strategy.
1  A description of meme
    In Western academic field, the research of memetics for explaining the rules of culture evolution has started and developed well. Now, there has been meme center, special web for controlling theory, discussion group in net, and memetics series. The term “meme” has been spread widely and entered into many fields such as psychology, sociology, philosophy, etc. Chinese scholars are also involved in meme research, the articles they have composed are as follows: Memetics and Social Pragmatics[2], Discussion on the Trend of Foreignization from the Perspective of Meme[3], Meme and Translation[4], Meme in Language[5], The Meme Theory of Culture Evolution and Its Difficulties[6]. These researches provide us with a brand new thought for researching language evolution.
1. 1 Definition of meme
In 1976, animal science expert Richard Dawkins of Oxford University composed a book named The Selfish Gene, on the basis of probing gene’ self-reproduction and their competition to improve the evolution of living things. In this book, he first formally put forward the unit of culture evolution---“meme”. There are many a form of meme’ translation. Professor He Ziran translates it into “模因”，which is now the most popular version. Meme has more than one definition. Dawkins defines it as: the unit for culture transformation, which transmits from one’ brain to another’s through a course. In a broad sense, this course can be called imitation. Oxford English Dictionary defines meme as: the basic cultural unit which is spread through non-genetic ways, especially imitation. The above definitions conclude that meme is a kind of cultural information, which is copied then spread through the way of imitation. Meme can be inherited as gene, and can be spread as virus. The one who transmits memes continues to hold the memes, so the infecting course can be considered as a copying course. That is, to produce a meme’ copy in another person’ memory and to make him a host. The host must have the ability to interpret the meme and carry out the comprehensive task relative with meme, which means only human beings can become such a host. What’ more, the spread of meme can’t get through without the aid of medium, which means anything that can transmit memes between different hosts, such as wall, voice, picture, magazine and e-mail. Those who are “infected” are possible to change their behavior and try to advocate the new behavior style. For instance, for some matters, like slang, popular phrases, melody, invention and fashion, if only one person leads the way, the others can’t help imitating and spreading widely. Then there appears such meme phenomena as “I say what most people say”, “I do what most people do”. It’s hard to say what memes are, but when we see new events appear and be spread, we can recognize that is the result of meme’s effect.转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net