Cultural Compensation In Zhu Shenghao’s Translation Of Othello Viewed From A Hermeneutic Perspective

Translation compensation study began in the west towards the end of the20th century, and it is a rather new subject in China. Up till now, scholars in the west have not agreed on the nature of compensation and put forward various compensation strategies and methods. Recently, more and more Chinese scholars have begun to work on translation compensation study. However, studies on compensation based on a case analysis are still quite rare.This thesis studies Zhu Shenghao’s cultural compensation strategies for cultural default in Othello under the light of George Steiner’s fourfold translation motion theory.Othello is rich in English cultural background information, much of which was self-evident for Shakespeare and his intended readers and is therefore consciously or unconsciously omitted. However given the geographical, historical and cultural difference between Shakespeare’s England and Zhu Shenghao’s China, if Zhu ignored cultural default that abounds in Othello and failed to make adequate compensation, the acceptability of the target text would be seriously affected.George Steiner’s fourfold translation motion provides an intuitive perspective in analyzing Zhu Shenghao’s compensation behavior in translating "Othello". According to this theory, in translation process, the translator goes through four steps:trust; aggression; incorporation and compensation. First,"trust" means the translator believes that what he chooses to translate is meaningful so it is worth translating. Second,"aggression" indicates that understanding is a "violent" act, and then the translator will take something away. Third, whether "incorporation" is good or bad depends on the translator himself. The business of the translator is to make the "fusion of horizons" happen, leading the translator to know the source text author in the translator’s way. Finally, compensation is the restitution for the imperfectness, to restore the balance between the source text and the target text.This thesis draws the conclusion that Mr Zhu’s spared no effort to translate all of Shakespeare’s plays out of patriotism. With a good knowledge of western and Chinese culture, and with fully considering the external factors, he mainly adopted four compensation strategies:transformation, literal translation, paraphrase and deletion to compensate for the cultural default in Othello, which enhanced the readers’ acceptability in a certain period of time in history.Chapter One is a general introduction of this thesis.Chapter Two reviews cultural default and compensation study in and out of China.Chapter Three makes a detailed introduction of George Steiner’s fourfold translation motion.Chapter Four studies how Zhu Shenghao made compensation for the cultural default in Othello, and what affects his choice of using certain compensation strategies. His translation enhanced the readers’acceptability in a certain period of time in history.Chapter Five draws the conclusion and points out the limit of this study.