A Comparative Study On The Translation Compensation Strategies In The Two English Versions Of Na Han

Lu Xun is a prominent figure in the fields of Chinese literature,ideology and social culture of 20 th century.His works are so well-known both in China and abroad that many translators translate them into various languages,including English,Vietnamese,Czech and so on.Especially,his collection of short stories Na Han,regarded as a mile stone in Chinese literature,is the first vernacular work in China.Whereas there are various differences between Chinese and English themselves,the loss of meaning and aesthetic values is inevitable in the process of translation.Consequently,translation compensation strategies,which are essential both for the translation theory and for the translation practice,are widely applied into translation process by translators in order to minimize such kind of loss.The English versions of Na Han are also as popular as original work itself.One is Call To Arms,translated by Chinese couple translators Yang Xianyi & Gladys Yang;the other is Cheering From the Sidelines,translated by American professor William A.Lyell.The thesis will take Na Han's two English versions as the main research object to discuss how to translate the original work completely and perfectly.The study mainly focuses on three research questions: the first one is which aspects Yang Xianyi and Lyell compensate in their translations.The second one is what compensation strategies they adopt.The last one is what is the similarities and differences of their compensation strategies and the reasons for different compensation strategies.Through the application of comparative method and the analysis of the two English versions,the thesis gets the conclusion that both Yang Xianyi and Lyell compensate from culture,grammar,aesthetic,semantic and pragmatic.Then by using qualitative analysis with specific examples,the thesis tries to explore what compensation strategies involved in the two versions.At last,it gets the conclusion that the translators use paraphrase,transliteration,annotation and domestication to compensate the cultural loss;amplification is the main strategy used by translators to compensate the grammatical loss;isomorphism is put into use to compensate the aesthetic loss;interpretation and substitution are effective strategies usedby translators to compensate the semantic loss;domestication is necessary to compensate pragmatic loss.By comparing these compensation strategies,the thesis finds the two translators hold the same understanding for the original work in some ways so that they have many similarities in their translations.But their living time,translation purpose and target readers have great influence on their compensation strategies.As a result,Lyell tends to apply domestication while Yang Xianyi doesn't.To sum up,the thesis aims at finding out manageable and reasonable translation compensation strategies,which can be commonly applied to guide other literary works through comparing and analyzing the translation compensation strategies applied in the two English versions of Na Han.Besides,it suggests that a qualified translator should not only take full account of various language and culture factors,but take target language readers' ability of comprehension into consideration as well.Meanwhile,the thesis would like to point out that one's translations should keep the original style as much as possible by using feasible and flexible compensation strategies so as to spread Chinese classical culture.