On the Cultural Default in Translation Practice

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Abstract：With the increasingly frequent communication among the cross-cultures, translation, as a quite important subject, carries an extraordinary meaning. However, the existence of the cultural default brought a great deal of obstacles and inconvenience to the communication of the cross-culture. In order to eliminate these obstacles during the process of the communication, this paper will firstly make some deep researches, further explorations and exact conclusions on the cultural default.

Key words：communication of the cross-culture; cultural default; compensatory strategies

Ⅰ. Introduction

During the process of communication, the members in the same cultural system could eliminate some of the relevant shared cultural background knowledge to improve communication efficiency according to the pragmatic economic principles, which is the cultural default.

Ⅱ. The Negative Impacts Caused by the Cultural Default

During the past two decades, there had been a clear trend in the translation studies gradually, which is to consider translation as a cross-cultural communication. Currently, studying the translation from the cultural perspective has just been unfolding. Because of the objective existence of the cultural differences, there will inevitably be the loss of the cultural information during the process of translation. After the study, we can easily find that it may make some cultural information damaged while translating the original article, so that the translatability becomes relatively translatable, which is to say that there is the limitation for the translatability. In this section, I will discuss the negative impact, which is also called the problem of the translation with limitation, caused by this kind of the special cultural phenomenon, which is what we call the cultural default.

First of all, through the deep and detailed consideration from the point of the cultural default, we can easily find that there has been one kind of close relationship between culture and translation, and there has been also the intrinsically necessary connection between the cultural default and the limitation caused by the two areas. Because the existence of the phenomenon of the cultural default results in the “meaning vacuum” during the process of translation, the translatability of the text of the cultural default would be restricted.

Secondly, the existence of the cultural default mainly relies on the following five aspects, such as the thinking elements in the culture, the social and historical factors, the cultural loaded words, the religious and cultural differences and the regional cultural differences.

Again, the three types of the common translation problems caused by the phenomenon of the cultural default were the excessive translation, the inadequate translation, and the wrong translation. These translation problems actually reveal out that the translatability of the text of the cultural default is quite limited.

Finally, the cultural default is a phenomenon, which is difficult to avoid during the cross-cultural communication, as well as a link, which can not be ignored. The cultural default poses many difficulties onto the translation job and results in the limitation of translatability.

Ⅲ. The Methods of Dealing with the Negative Impacts Caused by the Cultural Default

In this part, I will provide some translation reconstruction strategies. After the study of the preceding parts, I believe that during the process of the translation, the way of analyzing the factors of the cultural default, retaining the cultural information, transplanting the cultural information of the original article, or even deleting the cultural information of the original one mainly depends on the importance and roles of the target article.

3.1 The Literal Translation

The literal translation, which means that under the circumstance of reaching the linguistic standard of the target language, the translation is not only consistent with the general thoughts and contents of the original article, but also doesn’t change the translation methods of the forms of expression of the original article. In addition, as for the form, under some certain conditions, the translated one should be as close as possible to the original article, so that the readers of the translated ones can be provided with the best contextual effects.

3.2 The Replacing Translation

The replacing translation, namely using one cultural image in the culture of the target language to replace another image in the culture of the primitive language in order to achieve the same communicative effect. Because if we use the literal translation, we would cause the misunderstandings, so we could adopt the replacing translation of using the allusions having the quite similar concepts and colors with the target language, or the cultural images to obtain the best correlation.

3.3 The Paraphrasing Translation

Because of the cultural differences, when some cultural factors, translated literally, can not be accepted by the readers, and the replacing translation is difficult to be carried out, you can take the paraphrasing translation. In general, it is used for translating the minor cultural information whose cultural factors in the works are less important. The paraphrasing translation includes the concretion, the generalization and the interpretation method.

3.4 The Deleting Translation

The deleting translation doesn’t mean no translation, but deleting some of the cultural information. It applies to the less important cultural information. If these messages are interpreted, they need to be added some explanations so as not to cause some unnecessary burden.

Ⅳ. Conclusion

The cultural default is not only a phenomenon, which is difficult to avoid during the process of the cross-cultural communication, but also a link, which can’t be ignored. The cultural default poses many difficulties onto the translation job and results in the limitation of translatability. However, this limitation is not static but dynamic and changing. What the culture of a nation needs to develop not only depends on itself, but also on absorbing all kinds of advantages and the alien culture. Translation is such an effective way, which can absorb all sorts of different cultures, thereby promote the further development of the cross-cultural communication. By this way, the degree of translatability of the text of the cultural default will be improved. In the near future, the cross-cultural communication will become more and more convenient, and the civilization of human culture will also bear fruits on the earth.

References：

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