Translation Compensation Strategy In Light Of Hermeneutics Theory

The Teahouse and Social Life in Chinese Cities in the Early 20th Century is a report on history,geography,and social culture.The teahouse is a typical social space,where anything bears distinct cultural and historical connotations,all worth carefully wording and phrasing.With the language differences and the loss caused in the cultural exchange,compensation is necessary.The translator explores translation compensation with the principle of George Steiner’s hermeneutic translation motion.Hermeneutics gives priority to understanding and explanation.According to Steiner,the translator goes through four steps in the process of the translation.He "trusts"the source text with his command of language and culture,and "invades" it—grasps the overall idea and bears in mind the purpose of the translation.Then he "absorbs" the cultural meanings of the source text and infuses them into the translation.Based on the first three steps,the imbalance between the source text and the translation is"compensated" to achieve more effective spiritual and cultural communication.The translation techniques adopted in the last step is the focus of this thesis.In the process of translating The Teahouse and Social Life in Chinese Cities in the Early 20th Century,the imbalance is compensated from three levels.At the linguistic level,lexical expression and logical cohesion are considered to make translation faithful and natural.At the cultural level,images with cultural connotations are focused on.At the aesthetic level,compensation is made from the perspectives of phonology,rhetoric,and descriptive statements for restoring the beauty of both form and content.