Translator's Creative Treason And Reconstruction Of Cultural Default In Literary Translation

Cultural default is defined as the absence of relevant cultural background knowledge shared by the author and his/her intended reader. It functions as a communication strategy in relation to cognition. Since it is a culture-specific phenomenon and the cognitive environment of the source text writer and that of the target text reader are different, cultural default may probably result in misreading or incoherent understanding in cross-cultural communication. This highlights the translator's responsibility as a mediator between cultures for taking necessary translation strategies to help target text reader understand the text fully and accurately.It is widely accepted that the subject of translation, especially literary translation is the translator, who plays an extremely important role in translation activities. In almost all the translation works, the translator's conscious or unconscious subjectivity features can be found. In literary translation, despite the great efforts he/she may make to seek faithfulness to the original, the translator is compelled by causes both subjective and objective to labor creatively and treasonously. Just as Escarpit once states, "Literary translation is always a kind of creative treason."The thesis author attempts to probe into the phenomenon of cultural default in literary translation from the perspective of translator's creative treason and further explore translation strategies to reconstruct cultural default for the target text reader in accordance with the creative treason's forms: addition, omission, deviation, etc.