An Analysis Of The Compensation Strategies In James I. Crump's Translation Of Chan-kuo Ts'e

The loss of meanings and aesthetic features of the original text is inevitable in the translation process due to different linguistic structures and cultural backgrounds in two different languages. Translators need to employ various compensation strategies to reduce this kind of loss to the least. It is for this reason that compensation theory plays an important role in both translation studies and practice. However, studies on compensation have not received due attention till 1980s. Although studies on compensation theory began to increase from 1980s, there is still no agreement on its definition and theoretical framework. Therefore, it is greatly needed to develop a complete theoretical framework to justify and analyze compensation strategies during translation process. On the other hand, an analysis on the compensation strategies of a successful translated version can serve to refine compensation theory. American sinologist James I. Crump finished his complete translation of Chan-kuo Ts'e into the language of English in the year of 1970. The translated version immediately received high comments from scholars abroad, which can prove the success of his compensation strategies. However, this English version of Chan-kuo Ts 'e has not been under a thorough analysis of its compensation strategies by Chinese scholars yet. For this reason, this thesis on the base of compensation researches already done abroad and at home, aims to analyze and classify compensation strategies in Crump's translation of Chan-kuo Ts 'e at the lexical level, the syntactic level and the level of rhetoric to have a holistic perception of Crump's compensation strategies and more importantly, to find out the reasons and motivations of those strategies as well as the role of translators in the process of compensation strategies. The result is that Crump's own translation strategies not only basically retained the style of original text but also contributed to the well receipt of this translated version among the intended readers. The translators are direct designers of compensation strategies and their designs would be highly influenced by the intended readers.