Loss And Compensation In Prose Translation

Translation started in response to the very first needs of trans-cultural communication. Due to the limited understanding of the nature of language, ancient people blindly worshiped the language. They treated the scripts in sutra or classics with reverence and awe. This kind of belief is displayed in the translation of Buddhist sutras and the Bible, which cast a veil over the issue of loss and compensation. As the knowledge in the nature of langue being improved, the mysterious nature of language manifests itself gradually. The source language is no longer being regarded as the only guide line. However, when the attention is directed to the target language, it could be found that the translation losses are always there.The differences between languages and cultures would result in translation loss. The loss occurred in the translation of written language is more obvious due to the dislocation of time and space. The loss is an inevitable issue and compensation is an imperative step toward better translation. This paper is devoted to the research on the issue of translation loss and compensation and also discusses the compensation strategies applied in modern Chinese prose translation.This paper consists of six chapters. The first chapter gives a brief introduction. In the second chapter, the different viewpoints and researches concerning translation loss and compensation from both foreign and domestic scholars in modern translation studies field are highlighted and evaluated.The third chapter starts with the contrastive studies between Chinese and English in three aspects, namely, thinking pattern, linguistics and culture, to trace the root of the loss. Then an analysis is made on translation loss relating to its inevitability and hidden nature.Where there is loss there is compensation. The fourth chapter elaborates on the premise and the possibility of compensation. The compensation is classified into two categories according to whether the compensation parts are disclosed in the target text. Each kind is discussed and explained in this part.In the fifth chapter, the research of translation loss and compensation in practice is done. Due to its unique features, modern Chinese prose is selected as the literary text to discuss how compensation is conducted to deal with the different kinds of loss. The author has put forward three principles to guide the compensation in modern Chinese prose translation and discussed five major compensation methods, including explanation, transliteration, annotation, amplification and replacement.In chapter six, we can make the conclusion that the loss in translation is unavoidable and compensation is an effective strategy to make up for the loss, when the equivalency is hard to be found between two languages from different families. Compensation strategies, on the one hand could provide the necessary information implicated in the source text and contribute to the reproducing of distinctive artistic flavor as well as the connection between sentiment and scene in prose. At the same time compensation should also be conducted according to certain rules and we could not desire that everything in the source target be reproduced in the target text.