A Practice Report From The Perspective Of Compensation Theory

Due to the language and cultural differences and the “invasion” of the subjective factors of the translator,it is inevitable to lose some elements of the source language in the process of translation.But the translator,faced with the loss,is not at the end of his or her wits.Many compensatory strategies could be applied to make up the differences and gaps between different language systems,convey the information and effect of the so urce language to the target language readers as much as possible,and finally,diminish the loss to a minimum.It is incumbent for the translators to compensate the vacancy.However,throughout the history of C hinese and western translation,it was not until the second half of the 20 th century that translation compensation officially emerged on the historical stage of translation studies.So far,there is still no systematic and comprehensive study in the research domain.Compared with other problems in the field of translation study,translation compensation research is still in a relatively backward stage.This report takes 60 Minutes as corpus,which is the most influential television news program on CBS and is aimed at serious political news topics,the most newsworthy hot events and news figures,highlighting investigative reporting and having a unique and fixed style of news reporting.The diversity of news genres determines that translators should choose different means of expression according to different contents and genres,so that it can be stylistically appropriate.News language,whose text is full of exotic words,terminology and words with cultural connotations,holds a wide range of vocabulary.Translators are required to be equipped with the relevant knowledge of different styles and domains and be acquainted with the social and cultural background and differences as well.The main purpose of the news report is to convey information,so accuracy,conciseness and popularity should be the three core characteristics of it.By translators’ applying compensation theory and keeping the effect of the source language can target readers understand the events in the authentic background,process and effect through the window of the news.Translation compensation strategies are classified into three levels in this report,namely,linguistic compensation,aesthetic compensation and cultural compensation.The author studied the text features by the typical examples in the translation,discussed the three levels of the compensatory strategies and drew conclusions as the following: firstly,the translation materials of the report are of great practical significance.The success of 60 Minutes is definitely not an accident.Its program format,features of the host and the pursuit of truth are worthy of the following of Chinese journalists and TV programs.Secondly,untranslatability does exist in translation process,while non-compenstability does not.In order to convey the information of the text and reproduce the effect of the source language,the loss could be compensated by some extent by various compensatory strategies such as amplification,annotation,specification,domestication and substitution and so on.