Translation Compensation Strategies For Cultural Defaults

The author chooses An Archive of Taste:Race and Eating in the Early United States as her translation practice material.This is the first book in American history to systematically look at the relationship between race and eating in the early United States.During the translation process,the author makes a detailed list of all the challenges she encounters and finally decides to focus on the most difficult point—cultural default.Cultural defaults really abound in culture-loaded texts.Although there are a lot of studies on translation compensation for cultural defaults,translators can sometimes still feel at a loss about which strategy they should choose and how to put the strategies into actual use.The method employed in this thesis is case study.During the translation process,the author takes notes of all the types of cultural defaults encountered.After a thorough analysis of the translation,the author summarizes the five translation compensation strategies used in the translation of the source text:literal translation with a footnote or an endnote;contextual amplification;adaptation without annotation;transliteration with annotation and adaptation with annotation.The author hopes that this thesis can provide some valuable experience for future translation relating to cultural defaults.One thing the author wants to mention here is that translators should choose their own compensation strategies according to their own text types and contexts instead of employing strategies rigidly.