Perceptions about Foreignization and Domestication: A Case Study of Undergraduate Students at NUML, Islamabad

The following study aims to find out the attitudes of the undergraduate students of 8th semester, studying at National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad, about the two techniques of translation, foreignization and domestication. The concept of foreignization and domestication was put forwarded by an American translation theorist, Lawrence Venuti, in 1995 in his work A Translator’s Invisibility. Two translated paragraphs of Ismat Chughtai’s short story, Do Hath, are given to the students. One is written using domestication, and the other is written leaving imprints of the source culture. The research is exploratory as interviews are conducted to corroborate the study. For analysis of interviews, Kathy Charmaz’s model of interview analysis is used. The model was given in 2012 in Charmaz’s book about the Grounded Theory. It is found that the students of the English Department of NUML, Islamabad, who have studied Translation Studies as a subject in their previous semester (7th semester), asserts that the technique of foreignization should be prioritized while translating texts from Urdu to English.