Cultural Default And Its Compensation In TCM Translation From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

Traditional Chinese Medicine, abbreviated as TCM, has a history of several thousand years. It is an indispensable part of the Chinese culture. Translation of TCM makes significant contributions to the integration of TCM and Western medicine, and to the modernization of TCM and the intercultural communication between Chinese and Western cultures. As an intercultural communication activity, cultural default poses a big challenge to the translation of TCM.Cultural default, a commonly seen phenomenon, which is defined as the absence of the relevant cultural background knowledge shared by the writer and his intended readers. Since the writer and his intended readers have shared background cultural knowledge, the default of transparent or self-evident cultural information can achieve economy of expressions, thus improving the communication efficiency. However, in intercultural communications, for example, in translation, the SL readers do not share the same cultural background knowledge due to their different language-culture communities. As a result, cultural default of the original texts poses challenges to the translator.Translators have summed up the methods of compensation for the TL readers' cultural default in translation practice. This thesis attempts to introduce reception theory into the process of TCM translation, in the hope of finding a new perspective of compensation for cultural default in its translation, puts forward the principles of compensation and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of current approaches the translators adopted in dealing with cultural default, providing a reference for the translators to choose a suitable way to deliver cultural default factors.In Chapter One, the present thesis firstly has a brief review of cultural default from its definition, origin, then makes an overall analysis of its communication value, aesthetic value and puts forward the necessity of the compensation for cultural default. Secondly, in order to illustrate the importance of conveying the cultural information contained in Chinese medicine documents, this chapter proceeds with the introduction to TCM and features of its language system. Cultural default in TCM translation practice is also discussed.In the second chapter, the author gives a systematic introduction to reception theory and then makes a detailed analysis of some important concepts of reception theory in translation and their enlightenment on compensation for cultural default. Then Chapter Three makes a research on the principles of compensation and brings about the conclusion that according to reception theory, in the process of cultural compensation, the translator should abide by two principles: making the TL reader acquire the pleasure of aesthetic value of the original text and making the TL reader acquire the pleasure of cultural exploration of the original text.According to the two principles, some concrete strategies of cultural compensation are discussed in the fourth chapter. Since there are many parameters influencing the option of the compensation methods, the translator should adopt a flexible and realistic attitude to making a best choice.