Cultural Default And Its Translation Compensation Strategies In Xu Chi’s Version Of Walden-A Study From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Representing the intercultural communication act, the translation of languages is a conversion between two languages and an exchange between two cultures. With the strengthening of ties among countries around the world, many scholars in the translation circle have shifted their attention on the cultural aspects of translation. Cultural default, the term initiated by Professor Wang Dongfeng, has aroused extensive concern in the field of translation. As a writing technique to achieve efficiency and brevity in communication, cultural default may cause misunderstandings and meaning vacuum for target language readers. Therefore, relevance theory, the emerging theory with cognition and communication as its core, sheds new light on the rendering of cultural default.As a well-known collection of essays written by Henry David Thoreau, Walden was first translated into Chinese in 1949 by Xu Chi, whose translated version has long been acclaimed as the authoritative translated text in China. The present study, integrating theory and practice, explores in detail Xu’s translation of cultural default and the compensation strategies from the perspective of relevance theory.The thesis first reviews previous studies on the Chinese versions of Walden and relevance theory respectively, then briefly introduces relevance theory with its core concepts and reviews, and the application of relevance theory to translation. In light of relevance theory, the body part analyzes in detail Xu’s translation of culturally defaulted elements that are classified into 5 categories based on the revision of Nida’s classification of culture. In addition,3 compensation strategies used in tackling cultural default are put forward with a qualitative analysis of ample examples.Under the relevance-theoretic framework, the thesis proves that the compensation for cultural default in Walden depends on the translator’s obligation of creating a translated version helping Chinese readers get the omitted cultural background at minimal processing efforts. Therefore, transliteration with contextual amplification, literal translation with footnotes and cultural filtration are suggested to make up for culturally defaulted elements.