A Dominant Global Translation Strategy in Thai Translated Novels: The Translations of Religious Markers in Dan Brown’s Thriller Novels

Abstract

When translation is considered as an integral part of larger social systems (Even-Zohar 1990), the ways in which translations are produced to serve readers’ specificity could be affected. This paper examines whether there is a preference for a specific global translation strategy due to a readership that is specialized in terms of education level. Adopting Venuti’s (1995/2008) division of global translation strategies into exoticizing and domesticating translation, it examines the frequency of local translation strategies, which are part of a global translation strategy, used in translating English-Thai religious markers in Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol, Inferno and Origin. The religious markers cover words/phrases of belief systems in either Eastern or Western culture. The results show that exoticizing translation is a dominant global translation strategy that translation agents, such as translators and editors, use in literary translations of Anglo-American novels.