A Comparative Study On The Cultural Default And Its Compensation Strategies In The Two English Versions Of Chang Sheng Dian

Cultural default, a common phenomenon in literary translation, is defined asabsence of relevant cultural background knowledge shared by the author and his/herintended readers. Cultural default is often reflected in cultural-loaded words andexpressions, and it poses a tough challenge for translators. This quantitative studycombined with qualitative analysis attempts to explore how different translatorsemploy compensation strategies and methods to convey the original cultural imagesand promote cross-cultural communication.Two groups of translation terms: foreignization and domestication, literaltranslation and free translation are differentiated as translation strategies andtranslation methods respectively according to some scholars’ reviews. Based onstudies on translation compensation and previous researchers’ work, literal translation,annotation, amplification, substitution, paraphrase and deletion are put forward ascompensation methods for cultural default, which are graded to show differentdegrees of foreignization and domestication.Chang Sheng Dian (The Palace of Eternal Youth), one of the masterpieces ofancient Chinese opera, provides a wide ranging picture of social life at that time andprofoundly reflects distinctive cultural features. For the sake of data collection, thepresent thesis adds up87cases of cultural default in the20random scenes of ThePalace of Eternal of Youth according to Nida’s classifications of cultural elements intranslation. Guided by translation compensation theories and by performingMann-Whitney U-test and correlation analysis, this thesis then analyzes compensationstrategies and methods for cultural default in the translated versions by Yang Xianyiand Gladys Yang (the Yangs) and He Yubin by performing while combined with. Theresults show that there is a statistically significant difference between the two versions and they correlate to each other despite SL (Source Language) culture orientation ispreferred by both translators in the process of compensating for cultural default. As aco-translated text, the Yangs apply diversified compensation methods and properlyarrange them to reproduce the original Chinese culture to TL (Target Language)readers and promote cross-cultural communication by taking acceptability andreadability of the translation text into consideration, while He runs to extremes tokeep the original culture, presenting a rigid translation to some extent. According tothis point, the Yangs’ version outshines He’s version. Translator’s leading role in thetranslation activity is the possible factor affecting the choices of compensationstrategies and methods.On the basis of the findings above, it is hoped that this thesis would shed light onthe study on the translation of The Palace of Eternal of Youth, and on compensationtheories, strategies and methods in literary translation.