Cultural Compensation In The Translation Of Legal Literature

This translation report is based on the translation of legal literature criticism,i.e.,the fourth chapter of Women and Personal Property in Victorian Novels,which is written by Deborah Wynne.In the text,Deborah presents her interpretation of Henry James' s four novels by focusing on the relationship between violence and property.As legal literature criticism,the text owns both legal and literary features simultaneously.In the text,there appear frequently terms and expressions with legal and literary background knowledge,which cause many cultural defaults.Cultural defaults result in confusion for readers from different languages and cultural backgrounds and eventually keep them from achieving a coherent understanding of the text.In order to effectively and equivalently convey the text information to the readers,the author adopts four methods to make cultural compensation for the text: annotation,amplification,paraphrase and domestication.In this report,the author discusses the omitted culture elements and the cultural compensation methods respectively from legal and literary perspectives.The first step is to clarify the meanings of these legal terms and literary expressions;then to identify the cultural defaults from specific aspects like law,literature,rhetoric devices,etc.;the third step is to adopt the most suitable compensation method based on different contexts.Translators should transmit not only semantic information but cultural information as well.In the translation of legal literature criticism,which has both legal and literary features,we should analyze the cultural background knowledge involved in the text from multiple perspectives.Only with profound cultural background knowledge can a translator incisively notice cultural defaults in the process of translation and flexibly adopt appropriate methods for cultural compensation.