Being Faithful to the Source Language Culture

Findings of this study showed that cultural faithfulness to the original text is first and foremost thing in literary translation to achieve the function of cultural communication. The translator should use fitting strategies and translation methods to convert the cultural information in the original into that in the target text. The versions can never be over-domesticated or over-foreignized. Still, part of literary translation is related to politics. The translator should get to know the political, historical and cultural background of the original text and the author and the readers and critics should get to know that of the translator. The translator should also avoid over-domestication, over-foreignization, zero translation and mistranslation and use zero compensation, compensation in the version, compensation by annotations and compensation by transformation to compensate the cultural default in specific translating process. If you want to know about or know more about Chinese culture, read this book.