Study Of Cultural Default In Hulanhe Zhuan And Its Compensation Strategies In The English Version Tales Of Hulan River

Hulanhe Zhuan is a representative novel written by the well-known Chinese writer, Xiao Hong, who described in great detail the local customs, geological conditions, lifestyle of the villagers in Hulanhe, a town in Northeast China. Therefore, this novel is loaded with much cultural information. Hulanhe Zhuan was translated into English by Howard Goldblatt, who has introduced lots of Chinese literary works to the western readership. In his English version Tales of Hulan River, although Howard Goldblatt fails to convey all the cultural nuances in this novel, it is undeniable that he tried his best to compensate for the cultural default, and most of the cultural default is dealt with in a proper way in order that the target readers in the English community can understand what the original writer intends to convey.The thesis studies the cultural default in Tales of Hulan River from the perspective of relevance theory, which the author thinks has a strong explanatory power for translation. She makes use of relevance theory to explain the cultural default and the translator’s compensation strategies in translating this novel. In this thesis, the author combines her theoretical elaboration with case study. Typical examples of cultural default are selected from the Hulanhe Zhuan and are categorized according to the cultural classification by Nida. Then, in the light of relevance theory, the author presents and analyzes the translation compensation strategies adopted by Howard Goldblatt.Through her analysis, the author points out that as the original writer has different cultural background knowledge from that of the English readers, the target reader of the translation cannot enjoy the same artistic and literary effects as the original text reader do. Thus, from the perspective of relevance theory, the translator should adopt necessary compensation strategy according to the context in order to achieve optimal relevance. Besides, the translator should make some adjustments to ostensibly express the intended meaning of the original writer’s, because only in this way can the original writer’s artistic purpose of employing cultural default be maximally realized.This thesis is an attempt by the author to explore the explanatory power of relevance theory for exploring the translation of cultural default. She takes specimens of translation from Tales of Hulan River and discusses the translator’s compensation strategies under the guidance of relevance theory. It may shed some light on studying the translation of Xiao Hong’s works as well as translation of other literature works with lots of cultural elements.