A Probe Into Translatability And Compensation For Cultural Losses In Literary Translation

In an age of globalization and information explosion when voluminous translations are produced, study of translatability will promote cultural communication and mutual understanding between countries. This thesis aims to probe into translatability and untranslatability from a dialogic and communicative angle.Translatability and untranslatability is an important concept in that it helps to structure an entire field of decisions and principles in translation studies as an autonomous discipline. After an overview of translatability study both inside and outside the country, the thesis argues convincingly for translatability from three perspectives: firstly, as language has the capacity to describe both known and unknown things, the denial of translatability presupposes a denial of various languages' potentiality to express the inexpressible; secondly, untranslatability is due to the lack of knowledge on the part of the translator, and so untranslatability is indeed "unknowability"; lastly, untranslatability arises because of the difficulty in translation, and the so-called untranslatability is actually the loss incurred in translation. A case study based on prose is conducted to demonstrate translatability in the ensuing session.Differences in languages constitute the point of departure for translation— the unavoidable differences in languages ensure that there are always losses in translation, including cultural losses, which should become a focus in translation studies. Chapter Five proposes "thick translation", which employs footnote and other means as a way of compensation for cultural losses in literary translation. Based on an analysis of four types of cultural losses, the thesis takes examples of different types of cultural losses from the two English translations of A Dream of Red Mansions, and analyzes them by adopting thick translation to compensate for the cultural losses incurred. Thick translation serves better the purpose of communicating cultures. George Steiner points out that "A common humanity made translation possible" (Steiner, 2001: 259). Translatability is a mark of human languages, without which no communication between cultures would be possible. Recognizing translatability means to acknowledge the unavoidable losses in translation, which helps a translator positively probe into the best possible choices in the process.In general, translation is a cross-cultural event. The more intact the cultural information is retained in translation, the better it serves the purpose of communication.