On Variation Translation From The Perspective Of Cultural Compatibility

As culture has become a factor of growing significance in the competition in overall national strength,most countries attach more attention to facilitating their cultural influence throughout the world to enhance their soft power,and therefore how to make their cultures acceptable abroad becomes a new challenge for their academic community.Whether a culture is acceptable abroad or not depends on many factors with translation at their core.Translation is inseparable from language and culture.Cultural differences and translation methods both play an important role in the quality of translation.The text translated is chosen from A Primate s Memoir written by Robert Sapolsky,an American neuroendocrinologist and author—Parts 1.1(The Baboons:The Generations of Israel)and 1.2(Zebra Kabobs and a Life of Crime).The text contains much culture like American religions and society of the past,accompanied by slangs,taboos and rhetoric.Variation translation is more necessary than full translation in this regard.To this end,from the perspective of cultural compatibility,this paper is written to explore the principles that should be followed in the translation of cultural elements,and to find out the applicable variation translation strategies.Through detailed analysis of specific examples,it is shown that three principles should be considered,i.e.good comprehension of cultural meaning,good reader reception and good aesthetic judgment.By adding,deleting,changing parts of the text and so on,variation translation is achieved to some extent,thus bridging the gap between different cultures and making the translation more acceptable to target readers.