Adaptation Theory And The Issue Of Cultural Default In Allusion Translation

Language is a part of culture and plays a very important role in it. As a particular kind of language, allusions have long been cherished as the national heritage and the crystallization of world cultures. However, the cultural default in the literary works brings translators a very knotty problem all the time, which is the biggest barrier in the cross culture discourse understanding, and always makes the translator in a dilemma. From the translation motive, compensation of cultural default in allusion translation is based on the Adaptation Theory of pragmatics. The strategy of compensation is mainly foreignization, literal translation with notes, combination of literal translation and free translation, and domestication subsidiarily.The Adaptation Theory has enlightenment to translation. Verschueren's perspective viewpoint studies language phenomena and its way of functioning in every aspect from the angles of cognition, society and culture. It may bring more instructions and reference to translation research in this way. According to Adaptation Theory, translator should determine and adapt to his own translation motive, and recognize his translation motive as the principal part. Putting the Theory of Adaptation into translation, there are three angles to illustrate the adaptation to the translation motive: translation readers, cultural context and language structure.The aim of adapting to translation motives in allusion translation is to absorb other nations'culture, and enrich one's own culture, and then achieve the aim of cultural communication. Therefore, the translator should deal with the relationship for target language readers between compensation of cultural default in allusion translation and imagination space. Only to meet the translator's motive and keep author's writing purpose and style,which makes the version easy to understand and meaningful, could it achieve the goal of improving the translation quality practically.