Cultural Default And Compensation Strategies In Literary Translation

With rapid development of social and cultural exchanges in the world, there appears an obvious tendency in the translation studies: scholars attach more importance to cultural exchange than the mere transmission of language to the effect that in studies on literary translation the transference of culture is receiving increasingly intensified attention. Translation is no longer viewed merely as a linguistic activity, but also a cross-cultural activity revolving around cultural transplantation. As culture is closely related to language, which serves as the dominant carrier of culture, translation is viewed as not only dealing with two different languages, but also with two different cultures. With this convergence of translation studies and cultural studies, cultural translation has become the focus for considerable academic discussions and research work in translation studies both at home and abroad.One interesting focal point in cultural translation has been the unavoidable difficulty created by cultural default—a common phenomenon in literary translation—and effective approaches conducive to successful solution to this type of difficulties literary translators often find themselves confront with. Cultural default refers to default elements relating to cultural background knowledge outside the text. As cultural default is often caused by culture-loaded words and expressions, how to deal with culture-loaded words in translation is essential to successfully dealing with cultural default.With cultural translation theory as its theoretical framework, the present thesis intends to study methods and approaches adopted by the Yangs'(Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang) in dealing with cultural default in The Scholars, their English version of Ru Lin Wai Shi.As one of the ten famous Chinese literary works, Ru Lin Wai Shi possesses distinctive cultural features and contains a huge amount of culture-loaded words, particularly those denoting various aspects and facades of the imperial examination system. As the imperial examination system is peculiar to feudal China, much of what these culture-loaded words denote or allude to has no counterparts in English. Nevertheless, interesting as it is, the Yangs'approaches to culture-loaded words in The Scholars seem to have attracted little academic attention.This thesis consists in three chapters. Chapter One presents a theoretical foundation and offers definitions of some technical terms. Chapter Two introduces the source text—Ru Lin Wai Shi and the author—Wu Jingzi and The Scholars and its translators—Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang. Chapter Three analyzes concrete translation strategies and methods in dealing with culture-loaded words and expressions related to imperial examination system in The Scholars.It is discovered that Yang Hsien-yi, taking promulgation of Chinese culture as his obligation and chief objective, adopted various translation strategies that fit well with the fundamental theories of Cultural School in translation studies. The translation strategies and specific techniques Yang Hsien-yi adopted as well as the effects achieved can serve as evidences for the logic of much theoretical reasoning offered by Cultural School in translation studies. This thesis draws the conclusion that in keeping with cultural translation theory, literary translators might benefit from adopting a foreignization-first-and-domestication-second principle in their translation efforts aimed at cultural exchange, that cultural default can and should be successfully dealt with through adequate use of various compensation approaches and strategies in a flexible way, and that effective rendering of cultural default in literary translation facilitates promulgation of source text culture. It is hoped that the conclusion drawn by this thesis is of some value in providing literary translators with some useful guidance for determining translation strategies when faced with cultural defaults.