Compensation Strategies For Annotation

Relevance theory, put forward by D. Sperber and D. Wilson in1986, broughtlinguists’ focus from language generation to language comprehension. Although itwas not born for solving translation problems, relevance theory had profoundinfluence on translation studies and its theoretical developments. After Gutt combinedrelevance theory with translation studies, translation theorists gradually realized thatthe unique perspective of relevance theory is useful for the study of defaults andcompensation strategies. Later on, Translators applied relevance theory to translationcompensation strategies and deepened their comprehension for relevancetheory-guided compensation strategies.From the perspective of relevance theory, communication is actually a cognitiveprocess, during which inference is an indispensable part. Language communication isan ostensive-inferential process involving both the speaker and the audience, whichmeans translation, as a specific kind of language communication, is also anostensive-inferential process. However, this process includes three participants ratherthan two: the author, the reader, and the translator. Besides, it is a doubleostensive-inferential process which includes author and translator firstly and secondlytranslator and reader. One of the evaluation criteria for translation is to establish theoptimal relevance between target language readers and the original author, and toenable readers to gain maximal contextual effect by offering minimal processingeffort.Cultural default is what the author consciously omits during his communicationwith the intended readers for the sake of gaining conciseness and fluency. Theseomitted parts are usually mutual manifestations concerning cultural background knowledge of the author and his intended readers. Usually cultural defaults wouldn’tprevent source language readers from understanding what the author want to expressbecause they could fill in the blanks and gaps unconsciously with the informationstored in their knowledge reservoirs. However, that would be another matter for targetlanguage readers who live in totally different cognitive environments, so they usuallyhave difficulties in understanding various cultural defaults of the original work.Sometimes, misunderstanding and incomprehension are unavoidable. When thisoccurs, translator, as the intermediary for cross-culture communications, isresponsible for adopting essential compensation strategies to compensate defaults ofthe original work, and helping target readers to fully understand the source text.The House on Mango Street is a modern best-seller in America. From the angleof a Mexican girl, the author shows us countless vivid life pictures of MexicanAmericans. It has been a world-renowned work which has been translated into manylanguages. Under the efforts of Yilin Press, this book has been translated in Chineseand introduced to Chinese readers in2006. What’s more, the translator Pampaimpresses Chinese readers with his innocent perspective, nuanced portrayal, andconcise language in translation. One of the greatest features of Pampa’s translatedpiece of Mango Street is that there are many footnotes all over the book. At firstglance, you may think that so many footnotes could make a children’s literaturescholastic. However, as we all know, footnoting is the most acceptable and effectivemethod to compensate various defaults of the original text. These footnotes not onlymaintain the original form and aesthetical value of the work, compensate defaults tohelp readers fully understanding the work, but also imperceptibly broaden readers’horizon by replenishing them with background information and cultural deposits.