Compensation In The Translation Of Australian Aboriginal Novel Of Wanting

Translation is the communication between different languages.It transfers the SL text into an equivalent TL text.Sometimes the differences between languages and their respective cultural background can pose challenges on the process of translation.Therefore,there are inevitably going to be phrases and meanings in a source text that cannot be conveyed,at least not with complete fidelity.To reduce the loss and to keep the style and cultural features in the source text,it is necessary for translators to enact compensation.This report tends to discuss the application of compensation in Australian aboriginal novel translation through the translator’s own practice and aims to contribute to the future translation of aboriginal literatures.In this report,Tasmanian famous novelist Richard Flanagan’s novel,Wanting,is chosen and Chapter 3&4 are translated.The story unfolds in the brutal colonial history of Tasmania in the 19th century.The language of the story is well culture-loaded and of great literary values,thus translating it is challenging and loss is inevitable.A faithful reflection of the Flanagan’s wit and the rich cultural information requires the deployment of translation compensation.The report first reviews the previous studies on the compensation theory and the studies on compensation in guiding translation.Then,based on the difficulties in literary translation and features of Australian indigenous literature,the report categorizes the translation loss encountered when translating Wanting into three perspectives,namely cultural perspective,communicative perspective and aesthetic perspective and tries to make compensations with the strategies proposed by Ke Ping,including annotation,extension,division,specification,generalization,shift of perspectives,paraphrasing and adaption,etc.Lastly,conclusion concerning the choices of compensation strategies and compensation principles are made upon case analysis.