Cultural Default And Compensation In C-E Translation Of Tourist Texts From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Recent years have witnessed the great prosperity of China’s tourism industry, particularly there are more and more foreigners coming to China for sightseeing. Therefore, it is essential for C-E translation of tourist texts to publicize natural attractions and culture to the outside world. However, the status quo of such practices is far from satisfactory and deserves an urgent improvement.To deal with the problem, a certain number of scholars have been engaged in translation studies of tourist texts from the perspectives of functionalism, cross-cultural communication and reception aesthetics. By drawing insights from these previous researches, this article attempts to apply Relevance Theory to discuss cultural default in C-E translation of tourist materials. According to Relevance Theory, translation is regarded as a duel ostensive-inferential process, in which translators should be sensitive to cultural defaults in the original texts, and then translate their understanding to target readers under the guidance of the optimal relevance, enabling readers to obtain adequate contextual effects without unnecessary processing efforts.Taking the introduction texts in Fuzhou "Sanfangqixiang" historical streets as examples, this paper summarizes five kinds of cultural default in C-E translation of tourist materials, including ecological cultural default, material cultural default, social cultural default, religious cultural default, and linguistic cultural default. Furthermore, based on two elements of "ensuring adequate contextual effects" and "reducing unnecessary processing efforts" in the principle of optimal relevance, this study puts forwards specific strategies to compensate cultural default in translation, such as transplantation, addition, transliteration, analogy, reconstruction and simplification. Through these compensation methods, the cultural connotations of "Sanfangqixiang" historical streets can be effectively presented.