A Study Of Cultural Default And Translation Compensation To The English Version Of The Garlic Ballads

Nobel Prize Committee in literature claimed that one should read THE GARLICBALLADS first if he/she wants to know something about Mo Yan. This novel tookhim35days to write and got translated into English by a great American translatorand sinologist Howard Goldblatt in1988. The novel tells us a story called THEGARLIC BALLADS which happened in a fictive county called Paradise County. MoYan’s works are critically acclaimed in the West, and such a big success is definitelyclosely related to Howard Goldblatt’s contribution. However, the existing research onthis novel remains unsatisfactory. Most of the scholars only pay their attention tolocalism in the novel. If we want to lead the Chinese literature to go out of China, weneed more experience and guidance on translation. Since the translation of THEGARLIC BALLADS is so successful, why don’t we learn from it? But once thetranslation of Chinese literature is involved, there must be some problems withcultural default caused by cultural differences. Cultural default refers to the absence ofcommon cultural background knowledge shared by an author and his intended readers.But it will cause the vacuum of meaning to those people who have different culturalbackground.This thesis will take the English version of THE GARLIC BALLADS as anexample to analyze its features and translation strategies. The first part will focus onthe introduction of Mo Yan, THE GARLIC BALLADS, and Howard Goldblatt’spersonal experience and his view on translation. The second part will present thedefinition of cultural default and the challenges and requirements it brings to thetranslator. Then the third part will show people the classification of cultural default indetail. In part four, the writer will analyze the compensation strategies for culturaldefault in this novel which involve the amplification, substitution, literal translationand paraphrase. The last part is the conclusion, mainly telling the success factor of theEnglish version of this novel.