Compensation Strategies In C-E Translation Of Cultural Default For Folk Culture

This translation report is based on the translation practice of Handicraft Production,a chapter in Production and Trade Customs,which is one of the series of Folk Culture of Shanxi.The series introduce folk culture of Shanxi Province with both texts and pictures in various aspects,such as handicraft,food culture,festivals and customs,etc.,which fully reflect the diversity and richness of Shanxi folk culture.The series have no English version yet.Due to the uniqueness and regional characteristics of folk culture,the text contains a large number of expressions with regional cultural characteristics of Shanxi,covering all aspects of social and cultural life.The translation of cultural defaults is the main difficulty of this translation task.The cultural defaults are very common in the intercultural communication.Through translation strategies of compensation,the gap between cultures can be bridged and cultural connotations can be conveyed as much as possible.This report classifies the cultural defaults in the source text into four categories according to Nida’s classification of cultural factors: material cultural default,social cultural default,religious cultural default and linguistic cultural default,with 161 expressions in total.In terms of compensation,it draws on Ma Hongjun’s classification of compensation strategies to classify them into implicit compensation and explicit compensation.Specifically,six compensation methods are used to compensate for the cultural defaults in translation,including amplification,paraphrase,literal translation,adaptation,annotation within text and annotation outside text.It strives to convey cultural information to achieve the purpose of intercultural transmission.This report is divided into five chapters: Chapter 1 is the task description,which mainly includes the background and the significance of the task;Chapter 2 introduces the process of the translation task,including preparation before translation,translation process and proofreading after translation;Chapter 3 elucidates the theories of cultural default and compensation strategies;Chapter 4 is the case analysis,which analyzes how to use various compensation methods to translate the cultural default expressions combined with the specific examples.The last chapter summarizes the gains and shortcomings of this translation practice and what need to be improved in the future.