A Report On E-C Translation Of The Ecology Of Everyday Things (Excerpt) Based On Compensation Theory

Translation is a bridge which connects different languages and cultures.An ideal translation means that the readers of both the target text and the source text can have the same reading experience.However,due to the differences on language structure and cultural background between the source text and the target text,translation would inevitably lead to some degrees of loss in the semantic function,pragmatic function,cultural function,and aesthetic function of the source text.Therefore,it is the translator’s responsibility to make up for the information loss.The translated text is taken from the first three chapters of the popular science The Ecology of Everyday Things.According to Newmark’s text typology theory,the selected translation material is categorized as an informative text,which reveals the intimate connection between human beings and ecological environment through the “interrogation” of daily objects,such as tea leaves and T-shirts.The technical terms and long and complex sentences that appeared in the source text along with the different languages,cultural and historical backgrounds that the source text and the target text share make information loss inevitable in the process of translation.This report is based on Compensation Theory,with which the translator has compensated translation loss at the lexical level,grammatical level,discourse level,cultural level,and aesthetic level.At the lexical level,compensation strategies that have been used include amplification,specification,generalization and intensification of contrast.Besides,the translator adds particles,explicating words with passive meaning and words with plural meaning to compensate translation loss at the syntactical level.At the discourse level,the author added logical conjunction and person deixis to deal with information loss.In terms of the cultural level,the translator applied annotation within text and annotation outside text to deal with cultural differences in translation.At the aesthetic level,the compensation mainly reflects on the rhetoric and four-character structures.Under the guidance of Compensation Theory,the translator has compensated information loss in translation,and thus the information in the source text was preserved and conveyed in a better and more exact way.