Abstract

As is known to all, translation is not only a process of achieving language transformation , but also a course of exchanging the unique cultures and thinking modes in different languages. In a sense, translation is an activity of cross-culture communication. For translators, they are required to overcome the obstacles of both language and culture in translation. What’s more, cultural barrier is more complicated than language barrier. In cultural barrier, there is  one phenomenon that translators may often meet: Due to the fact that the author has the same cultural background with the source language( SL) readers, the author may omit some cultural information which is self-evident to both sides.This phenomenon is called cultural default. When faced with cultural default, translators sometimes cannot recognize it easily. Even if recognizing it successfully, they will also find it difficult to deal with the cultural default properly. It would be worse once translators come across the cultural default in literary works. Because of profound artistic value and subjectivity in literary works, translators tend to feel puzzled about what to do when they are confronted with cultural default.

This paper aims to study the cultural default on literary translation with the help of some examples from literary works, exploring its definition, formation mechanism and some problems caused by cultural default. In addition, the thesis also proposes some measures to compensate for the cultural default in the target language for the purpose of bringing ideal literary translation to the readers .  

Keywords: Cultural Default; translation; compensation; literary works

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction-1

2. Literature Review-3

3. Cultural Default-4

3.1 Definitions of default and cultural default-4

3.2 Formation mechanism of cultural default-5

4. Possible Translation Problems Caused by Cultural Default-7

4.1 Undertranslation-7

4.2 Mistranslation-7

4.3 Overtranslation-8

5. Cultural Default Compensation-9

5.1Two principles on compensation for cultural default-9

5.2 Methods of cultural default compensation-11

6. Conclusion-14

Works Cited-15