Cultural Vacancy And Its Compensation Strategies In The C-E Translation Of Chinese Novels

With the continuous improvement of China’s comprehensive national power,Chinese culture has gained more and more international attention.As a necessary channel of cultural exchange and communication,translation plays an important role in the culture "going out" strategy.As an important part of traditional Chinese culture,literary classics should be translated abroad,which is a way to realize culture "going out".Chen Ai Luo Ding is an excellent literary work which contains a large amount of Tibetan culture.In the C-E translation of Chen Ai Luo Ding,Chinese and English have distinct characteristics,so language and cultural vacancy comes into being.However,the improper handling of cultural vacancy may cause losses of the connotations of unique Chinese culture.Therefore,in terms of cultural vacancy in Chen Ai Luo Ding’s English version,Red Poppies,what kind of translation strategies and methods the translator adopts in the process of translation,how he tries to convey cultural information of the source language to the large extent,so as to make up for cultural vacancy and achieve the purpose of culture "going out",are worthy of studying.Russian scholars and domestic scholars,such as Yang Shizhang,Li Xiangdong and He Qiuhe have studied cultural vacancy and proposed some solutions.However,the highest goal of current Chinese literary translation is culture "going out".So from the perspective of how to achieve culture "going out" today,to discuss the translation of cultural vacancy is exactly the task of this thesis.The essence of Skopos theory considers translation as a purposeful intercultural communication activity and that the purpose of translation determines translation strategies and methods.Depending on the purpose of translation,translators can adopt corresponding translation strategies and methods,determine whether the original contents are kept or deleted and then make adjustments and modifications.The translation purpose of cultural vacancy is to achieve better cross-cultural communication between different countries or nations,and make the target readers enjoy the special cultural flavor of the source text in the process of reading the target text and feel the exotic charm.This is how Chinese culture can truly "go out".Therefore,Skopos theory has practical guiding significance for the study of the C-E translation of cultural vacancy against the background of culture "going out".Guided by Skopos theory,this thesis employs the methods of literature analysis,translation case analysis and qualitative research,to discuss the translation of cultural vacancy in translating Chen Ai Luo Ding against the background of Chinese culture "going out",analyzes its advantages and disadvantages,and puts forward the author’s own opinions and suggestions.The thesis finds that:(1).as for material cultural vacancy and spiritual cultural vacancy in translating Chen Ai Luo Ding,the translator Goldblatt mainly adopts foreignization strategy,while he employs domestication strategy to translate institutional cultural vacancy and unique linguistic cultural vacancy.(2).the translator Goldblatt uses a variety of translation methods such as transliteration,literal translation,transliteration plus literal translation and transliteration plus explanation to realize foreignization strategy;and substitution,free translation,explanatory translation and omission to achieve domestication strategy.(3).the compensation strategies adopted by the translator Goldblatt effectively make up for the losses of cultural connotations in general.(4).as for some cases whose compensation effect is unsatisfactory,the author suggests giving priority to foreignization and taking domestication as supplementation,as well as maximizing compensation to help achieve the translation purpose of Chinese culture "going out".