Cultural Default In The Translation Of Bian Cheng (The Border Town): A Reception Theory Perspective

Bian Cheng(The Border Town) is a masterpiece of Shen Congwen, a famous Chinese writer. There are many studies on Bian Cheng(The Border Town) and its translation at home and abroad. These studies are mainly about fuzzy quantifier, cultural-loaded words, invisible cohesion and explicitation in Bian Cheng(The Border Town) from the perspectives of Skopos Theory, Context of Situation and Beauty in Sound, Meaning and Form. is full of descriptions about customs and cultural phenomenon with specialized style and beautiful language. However, there are few translation studies about cultural defaults in Bian Cheng(The Border Town). With distinct style and beautiful language, Bian Cheng(The Border Town) is filled with descriptions about Chinese customs and culture. Since these descriptions are typically Chinese, they are familiar to ST readers, however, unfamiliar to TT readers. When the author wrote the literary work, he created cultural defaults by omitting detailed information about these descriptions about customs and cultural phenomenon, since they are shared cultural knowledge of the author and the readers. However, since the above-mentioned cultural defaults are unfamiliar to TT readers, the ways of dealing with these cultural defaults should be paid more attention.This thesis studies the cultural defaults in Bian Cheng(The Border Town). By comparing the two translated versions by the Yangs(Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang) and Jeffrey C. Kinkley, the most widely spread ones among the four translated versions, this thesis studies, from the perspective of Reception Theory, the above-mentioned translators’ strategies of handling cultural default in translating Bian Cheng(The Border Town). This study aims at answering the following three questions:(1) what kind of cultural defaults are there in Bian Cheng(The Border Town)?(2)What strategies the Yangs and Jeffrey C. Kinkley employed in dealing with cultural defaults in translating Bian Cheng(The Border Town)?(3) From the perspective of Reception Theory, why certain translation strategies are employed by the above-mentioned translators in dealing with cultural defaults in Bian Cheng(The Border Town)?The thesis is mainly divided into five parts. The first part is the introduction of the thesis, introducing the rationale, research methodology, research question and research significance of this thesis. The second part discusses previous studies on Bian Cheng(The Border Town) itself and its translation both at home and abroad and points out again the significance of this study based on the previous studies. The third part mainly introduces the Reception Theory, including the main thoughts, representatives and main concepts, establishes an analytical framework by applying the Reception Theory into the translation process and explains this analytical framework in detail. Part four classifies the cultural defaults in Bian Cheng(The Border Town), explores the different strategies employed by the above-mentioned translators in dealing with these cultural defaults based on the analytical framework established in part three and analyses the reasons why certain translation strategies are employed. Part four answers the above-mentioned three research questions.Part five is the conclusion of this thesis, concluding the major findings of this thesis: 1) There are five kinds of cultural defaults in Bian Cheng(The Border Town), namely, social cultural default, material cultural default, linguistic cultural default, religious cultural default and political cultural default. 2) Five strategies are employed by translators in dealing with cultural default in Bian Cheng(The Border Town), including recreating a new calling structure by covert translation, removing the calling structure by covert translation, removing the calling structure by overt translation, retaining the calling structure by covert translation and retaining the calling structure by overt translation. 3) The translators adopt the above-mentioned strategies subject to three factors: representation of aesthetic value of the ST, TT readers’ understanding of the ST and cross-cultural communication.