On Cultural Default And Compensation In C-E Tourist Translation

The development of tourism relies heavily on domestic and overseas publicity of the tourist destination, and tourist literature, as a means of publicity, plays a crucial role in tourism industry. Today, with the increasing number of foreign tourists pouring into China, high-quality translation of Chinese tourist literature is urgently required. It is closely related to the problems of which linguistics, pragmatics or culture, are commonly existed in C-E translation of tourist literature. The author seeks to explore the translation strategies for handling on the basis of the theories of cultural default and translation compensation as well as other related theories.In terms of the quantity maxim of Grice’s co-operative principle (Kramsch,2000:31), in communication, the speaker or writer will not say or write more than is necessary for the purpose of the exchange, but just deliver all that is necessary to convey the information required. So whenever a particular text is composed, there must be some information which the writer assumes his readers have already known and accordingly treats as default elements. The default elements are regarded as the background knowledge of our conversation or communication, unnecessary to be spoken out or written down as the reader or the hearer has known it previously. It is usually adopted by SL (Source Language) writers to create aesthetic value of their works or to achieve communication efficiency. In tourist literature, cultural defaults might be employed as devices to attract tourists as well. But in translation, cultural default of the original Chinese tourist literature often turns out to be a tough nut to crack due to differences lying in Chinese and English cultures, thus obstructing the tourist communication between China and western countries more often than not.In regard to the formation of cultural default, Matlin (1998:222) describes it as a type of schema, i.e., the organization of knowledge in human cognitive process involves units that are larger than words and concepts. This organization also includes knowledge about familiar situations, events, and the relationship among these situations and events. Therefore, cultural default originates from lack of schemata. When schemata in the source culture have no counterparts in the target culture, cultural default arises because the target reader cannot find default values to fill in the culture-bound missing blanks and fails in bringing out implicit meanings of the words. In Chinese tourist literature, various cultural defaults can be observed in different types of tourist materials, which are classified as a) names of historical scenic spots and figures; b) traditional concepts and beliefs; c) historical backgrounds; d) social customs; and e) literary works. These cultural defaults can lead to problems of translation loss in national character, image, associative meaning, information and tourist interests. Therefore, in translation practice, these elements have to be compensated for realization of successful communication between the writer/speaker and the reader/listener.Treatment of tourist cultural defaults in the process of translation compensation, in many cases, is to deal with the possible translation loss. In the perspective of translation compensation, the author bases his research on the prevailing compensation theories put forward by Nida, Baker, Wilss, Hervey and Higgins. Nida (1999:124), in his functional equivalence theory, holds that the compensation of the loss of isomorphism can be considered as a method to precisely represent the original meaning of ST and it is important to translate some non-metaphorical words by employing some metaphorical methods. Through translation compensation, it is believed by Nida that translation equivalence can be achieved to some extent. Aiming at realizing translation equivalence through her proposed compensation strategies, Baker (2000:159), too, analyzes translation compensation in a gradual and stable way and places the pragmatic and cultural meaning above the pure language standards.Grounded on the above analysis, this thesis systematically explores causes of the cultural default problems in tourist translation. The author holds that the dichotomy of the cultural elements in the tourist literature positively arouses the interests of the foreign tourists and negatively reduces the readability of the translated Chinese literature. By analyzing and exemplifying the fundamentals of translation compensation, the effects of translation compensation can realize the communicative function of Chinese tourist literature and establish functional equivalence between Chinese and English versions of the literature. Combined with theories of translation, the author reexamines and evaluates the conventional translation methods and proposes six targeting strategies for C-E tourist literature translation, namely, annotation, adaptation, cultural paraphrasing, contextual amplification, omission, and shift of expression, which are supposed to be the key approaches to cultural defaults in Chinese tourist literature.In the process of translation, due to the dual nature of the cultural default elements, the tourism translator must make efforts to transform the negative effect of cultural defaults in tourist literature into the positive one, i.e., to utilize these cultural defaults to fulfill the functions of the tourist literature, such as the informative, attractive and vocative functions. As a mediator between tourist attractions and foreign tourists, the tourism translator, must qualify himself with the following. On one hand, he/she must have a good command or knowledge of the two languages and cultures concerned; on the other hand, it is suggested that he or she accumulate sufficient translation skills and apply appropriate methods for cultural compensation to avoid translation error, which surely relies much on the tourism translator’s conscious and persistent efforts.