A Study Of The English Translation Of The Ethnic Culture In The Last Quarter Of The Moon From The Perspective Of Translation Compensation Theory

The thesis,based on the translation compensation theory,selects the novel The Last Quarter of the Moon as the research object,compiles and analyzes the distinctive culture of the Ewenki ethnic group in the original text,and discusses the loss of ethnic culture in the process of English translation and its effective translation compensation methods,aiming to explore the effective compensation methods applicable to the English translation of contemporary ethnic literature.Based on Bruce Humes’ English translation of The Last Quarter of the Moon,the thesis studies the effective compensation methods adopted at linguistic level such as the unique language of the Ewenki people,proper names,appellations,colloquial words and rhetoric,cultural level including the ecological culture(animals and plants),material culture(dress and personal adornment,houses,food and production tools)and religious culture(Shaman culture),and the aesthetic level including the imagery of book title and Shaman songs,summarizing five effective translation compensation methods in the English translation of contemporary ethnic literature:transliteration,transliteration with interpretation,substitution,amplification and paraphrase.It is found that The Last Quarter of the Moon,as a typical representative of ethnic literature,uses a large number of defamiliarization forms highlighting the ethnic characteristics of the Ewenki people at the linguistic,cultural and aesthetic levels,and the cultural default caused by this ethnic uniqueness leads to a certain degree of untranslatability of the source text.In the process of translation,the translator exerts his subjectivity to reconstruct the cultural default and makes necessary compensations: at the linguistic level,the transliteration,transliteration with interpretation and substitution methods are the major compensation methods;at the cultural level,a comprehensive application of translation,translation with interpretation,substitution and amplification are needed;at the aesthetic level,paraphrase and substitution are the effective compensation methods.Among them,transliteration and substitution with the highest frequency are used to preserve the original flavor of ethnic literature to the greatest extent.The findings of the research are as follows: first,the uniqueness of contemporary ethnic literature lies in the strangeness of its subject matter,narrative,language,cultural imagery and other elements,and the loss of the ethnic characteristics,cultural images and associative meanings is inevitable;second,in the English translation of contemporary ethnic literature,how to use the necessary translation compensation to reconstruct the cultural default and deal with its inherent ethnic cultural uniqueness directly affects the reproduction of its literary value;Third,transliteration and transliteration with interpretation reduce the translator’s intervention in the source text and is conducive to the alienization of the translation,but the translator need to take into account the acceptance of target readers;substitution makes the translation more acceptable to target readers with the same or similar expression in the target language,which is an ideal translation compensation method;the irreplaceable ethnic cultural elements can be annotated and explained,and the cultural differences between the source language and the target language can also be compensated by amplification.The study proves the feasibility of translation compensation theory in guiding the practice of English translation of contemporary ethnic literature,and has a certain reference significance for the English translation and transmission of ethnic literature.