Strategies On Compensation For Cultural Default In Literary Translation From Translator's Subjectivity

Jane Eyre,an autobiographical work,is written by Charlotte Bronte who is a well-known female English writer in the 19 th century.The novel tells a story about an English woman who has become an orphan since childhood seeking for freedom and dignity,behaving herself and searching for happiness with all kinds of tribulations.Since published,the novel has been translated into many languages to be widely spread over the world.According to statistics,over 30 famous Chinese translators have translated the novel into Chinese.However,it is quite difficult for Chinese readers to totally understand the cultural contents and feelings in the novel,so they cannot truly achieve the joy of reading literary works.Chinese readers share different living environments and cultural consciousness with the author of the original novel,so they lack of the cultural knowledge expressed by the author of the novel,and it is quite hard for them to accurately get the feelings that the author of the original text wants to tell.The literary work is not only the art of language,but also the party of cultures.Therefore,when reading literary works,readers do not only want to get the literal meaning and plots of the work,but also hope to explore the feelings and cultural connotations reflected in the literary work.Only in this way,can readers achieve the purpose of communicating with the author of the original text.However,it is impossible for the communication to be achieved if the reader of the translated text shares different cultural background knowledge with the author of the original text.As a whole part,each culture exists in the minds of all the people who own the cultural background knowledge.When creating literary works,the author of the original text uses language symbols to express a small part of the culture.In the process of reading,readers combine the small part of the culture in the literary work with the major part of the culture in their minds to acquire the thought that the author of the original text wants to tell.However,if readers share different cultural background knowledge with the author of the original text,it would be very hard for them to match the cultural knowledge in their minds to the one in the literary works and the goal of reading would not be achieved.The phenomenon is named cultural default in translation field.To deal with the problem,a great number of scholars and theorists have deeply researched the solution for cultural default,namely,cultural compensation strategies.As the most important element of translation,the translator is not only the reader of the original text and the creator of the translated text,but also the operator and the executer of the translation.However,due to the limitation of translation purpose,the translator was requiredto be faithful to the original text and do best to achieve faithfulness,expressiveness and elegance.That is to say,people focused on the translation methods instead of the translator.Until the item of “cultural turn” was put forward,the status of the translator began to draw the attention of people.Since then,people have started to pay attention to translator's subjectivity.So far,many experts have studied it and acquired some achievements.As the translator is so important to the translation,the translator's subjectivity would force translators to use different compensation strategies to deal with cultural default for a same literary work.Zhu Qingying,Huang Yuanshen and Song Zhaolin's works are the most popular three ones of the current 30 Chinese versions of Jane Eyre.To deal with the cultural default for Chinese readers,the three translators use lots of cultural compensation strategies for their translation.However,the translator's subjectivity of the three translators forces them to use different compensation strategies and compensation methods to attach different features to their versions.Therefore,studying the compensation strategies of the three translators from the perspective of translator's subjectivity can be a good studying point.The thesis analyzes the role of translators' subjectivity in the cultural compensation strategies in literary translation,selects three excellent Chinese versions of Jane Eyre,and studies the compensation strategies of the three translators to provide some references for the later translators to deal with cultural default and help them to do better translation.