On Compensation In E-C Translation Of Biographical Literature Under Chesterman’s Models Of Translation Ethics

Models of translation ethics,proposed by the Finnish scholar Andrew Chesterman,provide guidance for and impose constraints on translation actions.Ethics of representation requires translators to accurately represent the source text,the original author’s intentions and the source culture.However,linguistic and cultural differences between the source language and the target language result in the inevitable loss at different levels in the process of translation.Therefore,compensation has become a necessary means to completely reproduce the content and style of the original text.This report takes the translation practice of an excerpt from Every Day by the Sun,a family memoir of the representative American modernist writer William Faulkner,as a case and focuses on the loss of meaning and effects that has occurred or tends to occur in translation.Based on models of translation ethics and previous studies on compensation,the report discusses principles of compensation and the specific application of compensation strategies in E-C translation of biographical literature,which,boasting features of informative texts and expressive texts,is characterized by authenticity and literariness.Its translation should not only convey the objective facts and cultural information in the ST completely and accurately,but also reproduce the literary value and aesthetic function.The translator believes that the loss in translation of biographical literature should be compensated at least at the semantic,aesthetic and cultural levels,and explicit or implicit compensation strategies can be flexibly adopted.At the semantic level,to compensate for the loss caused by features of English language such as polysemy and abstract terms,compensation strategies of splitting and specification can be adopted.At the aesthetic level,to compensate for the loss of phonological effects,rhetorical devices,coordinate structures and humorous style,compensation strategies including creation of phonological effects,substitution and four-character structures can be employed.At the cultural level,to make up for the loss caused by proper nouns,customs and traditions,literary allusions,etc.,intratextual supplement and footnote prove to be available strategies.