A Report on the English Translation of Taste in Ancient Times (Excerpt) from the Perspective of Domestication and Foreignization

: Taste in Ancient Times is one of the D key Quanzhou series compiled by the Office of the Coordination Group for the Protection and Development of the Ancient City of Quanzhou, which showcases the unique charm of Quanzhou cuisine. Translating excerpts from this book works to tell the cultural stories of Quanzhou region through the stories behind food, which not only plays a role in promoting urban culture, but also has a positive impact on the tourism promotion of the city. This report describes the whole process in this Chinese-to-English translation project, and explores the Chinese-to-English translation strategies for tourism texts with case analyses from the perspective of domestication and foreignization. It’s found that at the lexical level, paraphrase featuring the combination of domestication and foreignization can be applied for the clarity of translation for culture-loaded words and four-character structure, while literal translation and transliteration featuring foreignization can be used to ensure the fidelity of translation for proper nouns; at the syntactic level, conversion featuring domestication is feasible for bridging the linguistic differences in complex sentences, rhetorical questions and dynamic sentences; at the textual level, addition and inversion featuring domestication are conducive to achieving the fluent expression and logical construction in terms of cohesion and rhetoric.This practice report attempts to analyze the characteristics of translation from the perspective of domestication and foreignization in the Chinese-English translation by discussing effective translation techniques for the excerpt chapter of Taste in Ancient Times. It is hoped that this study can attract more translators to introduce Chinese culture to the world, and provide experience and references for the translation on Chinese culture.


Introduction
Taste in Ancient Times is one of the series of D key Quanzhou books compiled by the Office of the Coordination Group for the Protection and Development of the Ancient City of Quanzhou.It takes "food" as a clue and simultaneously outlines the corresponding life scenes, so as to combine the taste buds with the tour of the ancient city, supplemented by exquisite pictures, aiming to intuitively show the unique charm of Quanzhou cuisine to readers.The source text is extracted from the eighth chapter on food in Taste in Ancient Times.The English translation can tell the cultural story of Quanzhou through the stories behind the food, and promote the city image through cultural publicity, which will effectively help promote the development of urban tourism, improve the city's popularity, and stimulate the development of urban economy.The perspective of domestication and foreignization strives for a balance between the language style and cultural characteristics of the source text in the process of translation, making the translated text more relevant to the reader's perspective and easier to understand.
From the perspective of domestication and foreignization, this study studies the English translation of the Quanzhou humanities book Taste in Ancient Times, which is conducive to deepening the understanding of the essence of domestication and foreignization translation perspective at the cultural level, providing new ideas for promoting cultural transmission, and also clarifying the unique function of works with specific regional cultural background in bolstering confidence in Chinese culture the two-way interaction of foreign excellent culture "coming in" and Chinese culture "going out".
Featuring a narrative text, the source text is expressed in plain and readily understood language, and contains many dialogues.It has distinctive Chinese expression features, many culture-loaded words, and a large number of four-character structures and rhetorical devices, which provide difficulties for the translation of the text.This study will analyze translation techniques from the perspectives of lexical, syntax, and textual structure.In view of these problems in the process of Chinese-English translation, the translator will put forward specific translation strategies to ensure the effective transmission of text information, retain the characteristics of the source language, and find the best solution to incorporating the perspective of readers to translation.

Process Description
As an excerpt from a narrative about the human culture stories in Quanzhou, this text of Taste in Ancient Times embodies some translation difficulties.To strike a balance between the source and target text on linguistic meaning and language style, the translator takes sufficient steps during the translation process and divide it into three major stages, with each concentrating on before, during, and after translation.

Preparation before Translation
Before translation, the translator needs to fully understand the meaning of the original text and have sufficient knowledge of the background.The culture-loaded words, allusion backgrounds and books cited in this text need to be understood by the translator combining cultural backgrounds, local customs, and other aspects to obtain a perfect translation.In terms of translation strategies, the translator is guided by the perspectives of domestication and foreignization, probes into the characteristics of tourism texts, and prepare for translation from the perspectives of lexical, syntactic, and textual structure.It can be concluded that the target text should be understandable and attractive, which is conducive to the understanding and acceptance of readers at different levels.More importantly, the translation needs to maintain the language characteristics and language expression habits of the source text, so that readers can be personally on the scene on reading.

Process of Translation
To solve the problems in the process of translation, elaborate and appropriate steps are taken accordingly in combination with the translation perspective of domestication and foreignization.The first problem is the inaccurate choice of words.There are many English words corresponding to the same one Chinese meaning, but the words that match the context need to be selected very carefully.Only by grasping the grammatical relationship and understanding accurately can appropriate translation be guaranteed.Therefore, translators need to repeatedly check these errors and strive to eliminate all grammatical errors.The next problem is the translation of long and complex sentences.In order to deal with this problem, the translator has conducted an in-depth analysis of the sentence, readjusted the sentence structure under the condition of fully understanding the meaning of the sentence, and translated it with concise expressions or clauses.Meanwhile, in the selection of translation strategies and methods, the translator refers to the typical translation strategies and methods of tourism texts.Paraphrase, omission, addition and deletion, annotation and other translation methods are used in the translation.The translator, based on the perspectives of domestication and foreignization, fully utilizes the flexibility of translation techniques to achieve faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance in translation through the transformation of different perspectives.

Issues after Translation
After translation, the translator reviewed the translation to ensure its accuracy and completeness.The most important thing is whether it retains the style and characteristics of the source language while meeting the needs of the target language readers.The specific method is to proofread the target text and check whether there is any omission or mistranslation word by word.After the integrity and accuracy of the translation are guaranteed, the translator also checked the translation methods used in the translation to ensure the translations of the four-character structure and cultureloaded words are correct, so that the author's cultural communication purpose is achieved and the reader's reading purpose is satisfied.Finally, the translator summarizes the translation methods and tactics used in translation.

Case Analysis
As a practical text of translation, the translation of narrative texts telling regional human stories typifies the characteristics of tourism translation.According to Tourism Translation written by Zhao Youbin [1] , tourism translation is a communication activity with specific intention, which mainly depends on readers' response to the target text.In order to convey information as accurately as possible, cultural differences can be bridged by using translation methods such as amplification, annotation, and paraphrasing.The translation of such texts should be reader-centered.In this section, the case study is divided into three parts: translation at the lexical level, translation at the syntactic level, and translation at the textual level.

Translation at the Lexical Level
The core of culture is language, while lexis is the core of language.Lexis is the basis of language and the reflection of national culture.Chinese boasts many gorgeous expressions with high information intensity.However, English features uncomplicated and objective words and phrases.Therefore, attention should be paid to the difference between the expressions in English and Chinese words.

Culture-loaded words
Chinese scholar Liao Qiyi [2] defines culture-loaded words as "words, phrases and idioms that mark the unique things in a certain culture.These words reflect the unique ways of activities that a specific nation has gradually accumulated in the long historical process differentiating from other nations."The debate between domestication and foreignization is an extension of the debate between literal translation and free translation, and there is no final conclusion on which is better [3] .In this, paraphrase and annotation are applied to translate the culture-loaded words in the source text.The translation method of paraphrase are processed from the actual meaning of the text, abandons the form of the original text, and processes the translation in the way that the target language readers are accustomed to, implementing domestication in the process of translation.The annotation translation method retains the expression and language style of the original text from the perspective of foreignization.Example 1 exemplifies the reference of literary allusions extracted from the song Previously Slow and the ancient poem Fifth Poem of Drinking.These two works both expressed the theme of comfort and ease of life.This is consistent with what the author wants to express as for the ancient city life here.It is difficult to accurately express the meaning of the original text through the use of allusion writing techniques.Therefore, paraphrase is applied to explain these two phrases clearly and authentically.The translation retains the original image of Nanshan Mountain with the expression of the target language, showcasing a translation technique that combines domestication and foreignization.It not only preserves the linguistic features of the original text in translation, but also makes the translated content easy to understand for the target reader.

Four-character structure
Four-character structure is a unique way of language expression in Chinese language.Generally, Chinese will use four-word phrases or idioms to express a sentence or an allusion or explain a truth, which is generally very concise combined with various context.However, the expression habits of target English language are quite different.There are also expressions of idioms and proverbs in English, but their use is not as concise enough compared to the four character structure in Chinese.Considering the reading habits of the target language readers, whether the Chinese four-character structure can be reasonably and appropriately processed is one of the important criteria for the success of translation.The four character structure appears in Example 2, whose Chinese explanation is that when two things are compared to each other, one's own shortcomings are magnified and makes one feels ashamed.In the context, the meaning of this word is that the quantity of pepper exported to the world does not even reach 1% of it in Quanzhou, indicating the huge spice market in Quanzhou.
The original text is quoted by Marco Polo, a famous explorer.In light of the fact that the translator should pay more attention to the reading experience of the target language readers in tourism translation, the translator chooses to deliver the meaning in accordance with the target language structure under the guidance of domestication.

Translation at the Syntactic Level
There are many differences between China and the West, such as different ways of thinking, expression and life, which have a certain impact on the structure of language.In terms of sentence, Chinese emphasizes parataxis rather than hypotaxis.Chinese sentences are short and simple, while English sentences are strict and complex.Therefore, in Chinese-English translation, the translator needs to take into account the needs of the target language readers while maintaining the ideological connotation of the source language author.

Rhetoric question
The rhetoric question is a kind of sentence pattern that requires no reply, either because the answer is obvious or because the asker already knows the answer.Rhetorical questions are generally used to draw a contrast, persuade the audience, make the listener think, or direct the reader's attention to an important topic.In the source text, the author put forward rhetoric questions to praise the unique flavor of Quanzhou's spices in sauces, ingredients, and even flowers.The translator uses the translation method of negation and literal translation accordingly to restore the rhetoric effects under the guidance of domestication.In the source text, the author expresses that people in Quanzhou have an indispensable degree of love for sweet chili sauce.In this Example, the original author uses the rhetoric question to highlight the fact that sweet chill sauce has become a necessity on the table of Quanzhou people.Guided by the perspective of domestication in translation, the translator accurately conveys the author's intended meaning to the target language readers through the method of negation, helping readers to feel the original meaning more intuitively and clearly.

Dynamic sentence
In the process of bilingual conversion, we usually need to break away from the shackles of the original language form and express the meaning of the original text in different ways or angles on the basis of understanding the original text [4] .Dynamic translation also comes into being.Its scope includes the conversion of active voice and passive voice, the conversion of subject, the transfer of sentence focus, and so on.English is a static language, where nouns are used much more frequently than in Chinese, while Chinese is as a dynamic language which features frequent use of verbs.Therefore, in Example 4, the translator chose to express a series of spices functions in the form of nouns instead of sticking to the original form of verbs.This approach is more in line with the expression habits of the target language and also conforms to the essence of domestication translation perspective, enabling the target readers a coherent reading experience and thus accurate understanding for the excerpt.

Translation at the Textual Level
Chinese and English languages are influenced by the different modes of thinking, which is displayed by great differences in the form of discourse thinking.To be more specific, English shows linear textual structure, where the paragraphs are expanded in linear form.At the beginning of the paragraphs, the theme is usually clearly pointed out, and highlighted, and the views are clearly stated.The whole text paragraph revolves around the theme: first summarizes the central idea, then expands the details in a straight line, and then unfolds around the content of the topic sentence, and lays the groundwork for the following content.While the Chinese language is spiral in the development of the text thinking, that is, it does not directly demonstrate the topic of the paragraph, but discusses on the periphery of the topic.At the beginning of the text paragraph, it starts with the relevant peripheral issues, and explains the problem from various indirect angles.The organization of the argument is determined by the thinking of the article [5] .To bridge the textual divide, this chapter will develop the analysis of the text structure from the perspectives of cohesion and rhetoric.

Cohesion
Cohesion refers to the property of unity between the content and form of the article.It is the reflection of the interrelation between the objective things described and the author's thinking.Whether the cohesion of the article is ingenious, natural and reasonable determines the logical fluency and reading of the target text.Here are the examples on sentence cohesion and paragraph cohesion are listed for analysis.The original text is described through separate sentences, and readers grasp the logical relationships through context, reflecting the typical high-context cultural characteristics of Chinese.In view of the fact that English reflects a typical low-context culture, it is necessary to realize grammatical cohesion and explicit logical relations through the use of conjunction under the guidance of the domestication translation perspective.Therefore, the conjunction "since" is added to highlight the causal relationship contained in the source language, and "although" is added to showcase the author's current abrupt state of mind.This kind of cohesion not only merges the original language sentences into one sentence, but also makes the discourse a meaningful unity, and achieves semantic coherence and prominent translation effects.

Rhetoric
Peter Newmark [6] , a famous British translation theorist, once put forward in the book Approaches to Translation that structure -for translation -is the overall planning of the text and the form and balance of a single sentence; metaphor is a visual image that can evoke sound, touch, breath and taste.In the previous section, the translator analyzes the cohesion in the text structure.In this section, the translator will analyze the rhetorical devices in the translation, specifically the parallelism.In this Example, the author uses the writing method of parallelism to picture different kinds of flowers sold by flower women in different months.Such rhetoric not only emphasizes the characteristics of Quanzhou people's love for fragrance, but also highlights the seasonal search of Quanzhou people for fragrant flowers as decorations every month, reflecting the romance of Quanzhou people and the city of Quanzhou.At the same time, the rhetorical devices of parallel sentences also enhance the sense of rhythm and readability of the article to a certain extent.In the target text, foreignizing translation perspective is used to retain the parallelism structure in the original text, while domestication translation perspective is combined to prepose the focus of the sentence "flower" as the direct object, making the sentence more concise and prominent.The handling of the textual structure not only preserves the unique charm of the sentence, but also improves the rhythmic fluency and linguistic authenticity of the target language.

Conclusion
In the global era of multipolar development, all ethnic groups must strive to preserve and disseminate their own culture if they want to win their own place.Therefore, foreignization translation is gradually gaining momentum [7] .But the purpose of translation is not to compete in the field of culture.Whether it is literary translation, theoretical translation or academic translation, the ultimate goal is to improve culture exchanges.The ultimate goal of tourism translation is to achieve cross-cultural communication between different nationalities, and the balanced use of differentiation strategies can appropriately make the target language readers fully feel the rich cultural connotations in the source language text, and complete cross-cultural communication on this basis [8] .The significance of this research lies in helping Quanzhou attract more tourists and cultural scholars to the city, and promoting the local customs and traditions of Quanzhou region to the world to the greatest extent under a balanced perspective between the source language author and the target language reader.Domestication and foreignization exist as different translation strategies, but they are both for the same purpose: to be faithful to the original or not contrary to the original [9] .This study finds that only domestication or foreignization alone cannot stand out as the keynote of a translated work.A single choice of domestication or foreignization would lead to insufficient delivery of the original information for target readers.Only by integrating the perspectives of domestication and foreignization in translation can the underlying cultural tone of the translated work be fully demonstrated.The translator starts from the four-character structure, proper noun, and cultureloaded words in lexical structure, complex sentences, dynamic sentences, rhetoric question in syntactic structure, and cohesion and rhetoric in text structure with the translation perspective of domestication and foreignization to analyzes the translation of tourism text in combination with numerous translation methods, including free translation, direct translation, annotation and other methods.The translation of culture-loaded words features more perspectives of foreignization, with annotations and literal translation are applied more frequently.In the translation of dynamic sentences, the perspective of domestication dominates, with the translation method of free translation being applied to most scenarios.In dealing with the rhetoric of the text, it is necessary to combine domestication and foreignization comprehensively, not only retaining the charm of the original text, but also making it easier for readers to understand.The conclusion drawn from the translation practice is that only by integrating the two translation perspectives of domestication and foreignization can the translator truly find a balance between the original work and the translated work, and achieve the best effect of linguistic expression and culture promotion.
Due to the limited academic ability and translation experience of the author, here are still some room for improvement in this translation report.First of all, the authenticity and fluency of certain target text may still require refining due to a lack of proficiency in translation perspectives.Secondly, the translation techniques used and summarized at different linguistic levels in this study may not be comprehensive enough because of the limited translated text.For now, translation research from the perspective of domestication and foreignization are limited to specific kind of text, but their application prospects in the translation of cultural promotional texts and tourism translation are still very broad.The author should spare no effort to improve the academic level on this basis and study diligently so as to contribute to this field in the future.