Cultural Default And Compensation In The Moment Childhood Vanished Of Muxin And Its Translation

This thesis studies the original and translated version of The Moment ChildhoodVanished of Muxin (《童年随之而去》), to analyze with schema theory to identify thereasons why default exists, then to study with the theories in the study of meaning andthe study of equivalent effect to answer questions like the common methods for culturalcompensation, the ways to decide which methods to adopt as well as the criterions toassess whether the default is acceptably compensated.Muxin is one of the most valuable but undervalued writers in contemporaryliterature history in China. Being among the last generation of intellectuals to receive theeducation in the literati traditional, he is also familiar with western art and literature,which made him one of the writers who understood the best of both cultures. Althoughdue to some reasons he was not highly valuated in mainland China, the attention on thesignificance of his work has been escalating in the recent years. Being in the time whenpeople criticize about the westernization of Chinese language, Muxin’s essays areamong the ones that bear the classic beauty of this culture. His language is known for its“variety, contemplation, pureness and smoothness”.Four problems are raised in this essay, they are:1. The characteristics relating to Muxin’s work and the hidden cultural elementsthat would possible cause default in it.2. The techniques and methods the translator adopted to compensate.3. An applicable pattern, of how and why to choose a certain technique ormethod when it comes to compensating a certain default.4. The common criterion promoted by other scholars in translation studies, tojudge if a translation of culturally defaulted text is valid or up to the standard. This essay has five chapters. Chapter1offers an introduction of both the writerand the translator, as well as the target text itself. Then the following part of this chapterserves as the preliminary to the analysis of the objectives, rationale, theoreticalframework as well as structure of this essay. Chapter2serves as the foundation of thisstudy as in this chapter a general review of the theories involved in this study is provided,with the focus on the cause of cultural default and the current studies of compensation.Chapter3puts the target text into analysis by applying the above mentioned theoriesinto the study of this specific text, to find out the existing defaults, which are dividedinto two types: the kind due to the lack of corresponding word, and the kind due to thehidden meanings. Chapter4classifies the adopted methods of compensation in thetranslating process. In chapter5, this essay is ended by a conclusion of all the findings,including an attempt to answer the questions raised.The existence and necessity of analyzing cultural defaults and compensating hasindicated once again that translation has evolved beyond merely linguistics and grammar,but into a discipline that is the interaction between translation and culture. As MarySnell-Hornby coined the term “the Cultural Turn”, translation requires more thanunderstanding the text and “reproduce” it into another language, but to take all kinds offactors into consideration, e.g. whether the reproduction would be acceptable let aloneunderstandable among the target language readers; would there be any sub-textualinformation that should be added into this translating process; or is there any elements inthis text that requires further explanation. The translator in this case made sure the“information” is reproduced, and went beyond that. With the many techniques andmethods he adopted to ease the cultural gap, his translation achieved acceptance amongthe English readers. Language is a part of culture, and texts only make sense in thecultural background. Without the consideration of culture, a translation would be hard tobe fully accepted by the target language reader. Even when the cultures are globalizednow, this step in translation is still necessary for proper rendering. The limitations of this thesis are: first, it fails to study the text with literaturetheories, to further understand the cultural defaults and compensation in the unit ofdiscourse; second, it fails to explore the significance or influence of the original andtranslated text outside the text itself in depth and detail; third, it fails to explain theevaluation of acceptance among original and target language readers as a method oftranslation assessment for the compensated text. However, in spite of all the deficiencies,it still managed to study the compensation employed by the translator in his workingprocess. Also, the study of this thesis will surely benefit further practices in translatingcultural intensive texts, and will help promote the awareness of Muxin’s work, which isnow clearly undervalued.