On Compensation In Literary Translation

In recent years, an increasing number of domestic scholars are paying attention to the new research domain of translation compensation, with hundreds of theses published every year. However, the research of the theory is still at an initial stage, which calls for a sound and established theory and standard. Until 2006, Xia Tingde published his A Study on Translation Compensation, the first book to present translation compensation as an integrated theoretical system, providing theoretical basis for the research and application of the theory. But there was no distinction between literary translation and non-literary translation in the previous studies. In fact, the purpose of literary translation is not only to convey the semantic content of the source text, but also to represent the culture embodied and the unique artistic characteristics of the original and bring aesthetic enjoyment to the target readers. Thus the compensation is more necessary in literary translation than in non-literary translation in that it evolves more respects and is more complicated in its content.Mo Yan, one of contemporary outstanding writers, has built a "fantasyland of literary" in "Gaomi Shandong", which is also "an epitome of China". His works have attracted numerous scholars'attention at home and abroad, which made him the first person in China who won the Nobel Prize in literature. His great success should partly owe to the perfect translation by Howard Goldblatt. And the excellent translation version should be paid more attention by translators and researchers. As a result, this thesis tries to analyze the compensation examples in Mo Yan's works and their translation on the basis of former research results. Considering the characteristics of literary translation, the thesis summarizes the features of literary translation compensation, proposes a system of classification of compensating levels and concludes its principles and strategies. A more complete theoretical system of literary translation compensation is hoped to be set up through more verified examples in this paper.By means of the research of the theory and verifying the examples, this dissertation analyzes four major types which are semantic compensation, cultural compensation, aesthetic compensation and pragmatic compensation in literary translation. Based on the characteristics of literary translation and some former compensation principles, six compensation strategies which are quite important in literary translation are put forward. They are amplification, substation, paraphrase, imitation, omission and annotation.