Cultural Default And Translation Compensation

A Study of Cultural Default and Translation Compensation in Hawkes’ Version The Story of the Stone Volume I

1 Introduction

1.1 Background Information

With the development of globalization and the increase of international impact of China in the world, more and more western countries are attaching importance to the study of Chinese culture. As an ancient civilization with more than five thousand years of history, China has formed its own unique and splendid culture and language. Language cannot exist without culture while culture cannot be conveyed without language. Translation plays an essential role in cross-culture communication, which is not only the exchange of two languages, but the exchange of two different cultures. The differences

Therefore, it is significant to make the compensation.

In 1960s to 1970s, the discussion of the relevant terms like “compensation” “compensatory” “compensate for” appeared in some theoretical literatures. Since late 1980s, the function and classification of Translation Compensation has become more and more specific. One of the most famous is the theory of Hervey and Higgins, who classified it into compensation in kind, compensation in place, compensation by merging and compensation by split. (Ma, 2003). In China, Ke Ping is a pioneer in the field of translation compensation. He sums up eight compensation methods: annotation, contextual amplification, shift of perspective, specification, generalization, paraphrase, adaptation and back translation. (Quoted in Xia, 2006, p.178). Wang Dongfeng categorized compensation methods into five types as annotation outside text, contextual amplification, adaptation, deletion and incondite translation. In addition, according to Ma (2003), those methods can be further divided into two types: explicit compensation and implicit

By observation, the instances of cultural default as well as the compensation methods will be found in the comparison of the original version of Hong Lou Meng and the Hawkes’ version of The Story of the Stone Volume I.

3.2 Research Method

The research method is data-based, and in terms of the research paradigm, it is exploratory, explanatory and interpretive; it uses a non-experimental method, which will yield qualitative data and results; and the analysis is an interpretive one.

4 Main Arguments

When translating literary works, we will inevitably meet cultural default, which will cause cultural misunderstanding and cultural loss. As a result, we need to apply different compensation methods to fill in cultural background vacancy of the target readers.

5 Possible Results

1) To classify cultural default, there are different ways and criteria according to different theories.

2) When dealing with cultural default, there is more than one way to compensate for the default, and each one has its merit and deficiency.

3) The problems caused by cultural default cannot be avoided in the case of the study.