On Compensation In E-C Translation Of In The Eye Of The Storm (Excerpt)

An ideal translation is expected to faithfully reproduce information of the source text for TT(target text)readers.Due to the restrictions of subjective and objective conditions,however,it is likely to result in varying degrees of loss in interlingual transfer,and compensation is an indispensable step to ensure the semantic equivalence between the source text and the target text.This report is written based on the E-C translation of an excerpt selected from a memoir named In the Eye of the Storm,which is authored by the Fourth Secretary General of the United Nations and mainly records the wars caused by hostilities between Arab states and Israel.This report is an attempt to explore compensation techniques applied to this memoir rendering in order to minimize semantic loss so as to faithfully transfer historical information and facts.Based on a review of previous studies on translation compensation theories and its application,this report makes a short summary of compensation,including the necessity,the definition and techniques of compensation.Meanwhile,the objective of this E-C rendering is established according to the documentary feature of the source text,which is to accurately and faithfully convey information of the source text to TT readers.This report attempts to find compensation techniques applicable to memoir translation based on the theoretical basis of loss and compensation on linguistic level proposed by Xia Tingde,so as to effectively convey semantic information and increase readability of the target text.Through case study,this report suggests that techniques of amplification,specification,generalization,and adding footnotes should be adopted as lexical compensation,while adding adverbs of time,adding particles and adding words with plural meaning should be used to compensate for the grammatical differences between English and Chinese.