A Study Of Cultural Default Translation

Cultural default, prevailing in literary works, has communicative value and aesthetic value. However, it causes "vacuum of sense" and "sense of mismatch" in cross-cultural communication, posing challenges to translators in the process of translation. In order to assist translators to deal with cultural default translation better, this thesis makes a tentative study on cultural default translation from the perspective of the Relevance Theory.From the perspective of Relevance Theory, the process of translation is a double ostensive-inferential communication, which essentially involves the writer, the translator and the receptor language audiences. In order to achieve a successful communication, the translator should help receptor language audiences to establish optimal relevance between the source language text and the target cultural context. This is also required in the cultural default translation. By taking Wang Keyi’s version of Pride and Prejudice as a case, this thesis identifies the methods employed in cultural default translation. Meanwhile, in light of Relevance Theory, this thesis points out the deficiencies of Wang Keyi’s version in cultural default translation. It can be reflected in:a separation of the informative intention from the communicative intention, the loss of aesthetic value, and the loss of communicative value. In order to overcome these deficiencies, this thesis attempts to put forward two principles:"principle of offering adequate contextual effects" and "principle of aesthetics". Under the guidance of these two principles, four concrete methods are suggested. They are "transliteration plus a category word","literal translation with contextual explanation","literal translation with notes" and "adaptation".This thesis is of theoretical and practical importance. The great explanatory power of Relevance Theory is further demonstrated, and translation studies focusing on cultural default make the studies more comprehensive. The two principles and the four techniques suggested in this thesis are of great help to translators in dealing with cultural default translation, and transmitting the aesthetic value and the communicative value of the original to the receptor language audiences.