Cultural Default and Translation Compensation—Take Joy Luck Club as an Example

Abstract

Cultural default refers to the omission of shared cultural background knowledge between communicators during the communication process. Target readers are unable to comprehend the omitted cultural information in the original text, and the tacit understanding between the author of the original text and the native readers is lost between the translator and the target readers, which resulting in a semantic vacuum, the artistic value of the literary work is greatly reduced. Therefore, translators should pay special attention to the existence of cultural default phenomena, carefully consider the cultural background of the original work, and compensate for translation with appropriate compensation strategies. In this way, the target readers can get the literary enjoyment from the original work. This paper takes the cultural default in the communication between the four mother-daughter pairs in the film "The Joy Luck Club" as an example to explore the crucial role of cultural default and translation compensation strategies in cross-cultural communication.