| Loss of translation is unavoidable in the process of translating. The scope of loss involves various aspects, such as linguistic meaning, illocutionary meaning, social culture, aesthetics and style. Therefore, compensation is the indispensable path to complete transfer of information, meaning, pragmatic function, cultural message and aesthetical component of the source text.This research is based on Jackson's English version of Shui Hu Zhuan. The author randomly selected 200 idioms, and adopted a combined approach of qualitative and quantitative nature with the aid of a parallel corpus. The author endeavors to explore strategies of compensation adopted and principles followed by the translator both at the linguistic and aesthetic levels.Of the total 200 selected idioms, 89.5% has received compensation. Compensation at the linguistic level accounts for 79% and only 7.5% at the aesthetic level. Besides, compensation at both linguistic and aesthetic levels represents 5.5%. The author has obtained the following major findings:First, compensation at the linguistic level was made mainly from the lexical and discourse perspectives. At the lexical level the translator adopted five compensation strategies: amplification, specification, generalization, omission and annotation. At the discourse level, compensation was realized by adding logical conjunctives and person deixis.Second, as to the aesthetic level, the translator focused on compensation for sound and structure. Moreover, compensation for sound and for structure interacts with each other.Third, the principle of demand and the principle of the same function play a leading role in dealing with compensation for idiom translation.
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