CONSTRUCTION AND APPLICATION OF THE LACUNA’S TRANSLATION MODEL IN MODERN LINGUISTICS

The cultural turn makes translation shift from word – text to cultural register. According to the view of cultural translation, culture serves as the translational unit. The lacunarity phenomenon, which is a linguistic and cultural occurrence when two languages are compared, has grown into a significant issue that translators must resolve. Therefore, the urgency of this research has changed to how to eliminate cultural conflict and fill up lexical lacunas. In this paper, we first clarify the similarities and differences of terms related to the lacunarity phenomenon from the perspective of their relevance. Then, aiming at the compensation of linguistic lacunas (semantic and pragmatic) in literary works, we adopt inductive, deductive, and modeling research methods according to the adequacy principle of translation, and put forward for the first time the concept of constructing the lacuna’s translation model in modern linguistics (novelty), with the purpose of building a complete set of systematic solutions to the translation problem of this phenomenon, so as to make the translation harmonious and unified in three aspects: aesthetic value, text equivalence, and functional correspondence. We can draw this conclusion from the meta-theoretical analysis of the lacuna’s translation model in modern linguistics and its use in the translation of the book “Tales of Hulan River” by Chinese author Xiao Hong: The model is a systematic innovation and endeavor in the field of translation based on linguistic research, and it has practical methodological importance. It can provide a set of formulaic reference standards for translators to interpret lexical lacunas. The following are the justifications for the conclusion: First, the model’s foundation is linguistic research on the concept of “lacuna”, including the examination of the relationships between terms such as “reality”, “non-equivalent words”, and “lacuna”, as well as the investigation of their definition, nature, classification, and semantic range; Second, the model adheres to the “adequacy” principle of translation, which comprises acceptability, similarity, and transmissibility while taking into account both the reader-translator and original-author orientations. This approach is robust and universal exactly because it takes into account every side involved in the translation process; Third, the model’s three theories work well together. L. S. Barchudarov developed 6 levels of semantic equivalence for language translation units, which focused more on the text’s equivalent in translation and disregarded the text’s communicative and aesthetic purposes. As a pragmatic addition to the equivalency theory of the former, the 7 functional dimensions outlined by Juliane House in the idea of functional correspondence of text can be applied. Meanwhile, by using the 6 organization principles of Gestalt psychology, the lacuna’s translation model in modern linguistics incorporates the translation form and subjective feelings into the reference mechanism from the needs of the reader as the subject of aesthetic meaning. It can be said that the triple theory offers a variety of reference indicators for translators, and they are free to combine suitable reference indicators in the filling of lexical lacunas represented by material culture, behavioral culture, institutional culture, and conceptual culture. According to the different types of lacunas, they can use translation methods such as transformational, interlinear, pragmatic translation, as well as by combining transcription, transliteration, replacement, omission, amplification, reconstructing, permutations, explanations in the text and other translation techniques, which reflects the flexibility of the translation model. However, the lexical lacunas themselves can be interpreted as a defective vocabulary in the target language, and the primary goal of the translator should be to compensate for or fill this defect, to let the reader understand “what does this mean”, then the functional correspondence of the lacuna's translation becomes more important. In other words, the lacuna’s translation model in modern linguistics requires the translator to pay more attention to pragmatic function and aesthetic effect; when necessary, translators must abandon low-level semantic equivalence and strive for high-level equivalence.

For citation: Yanxue, L. (2023).Construction and Application of the Lacuna's Translation Model in Modern Linguistics.Alfred Nobel University Journal of Philology, vol. 2, issue 26/1, pp. 273-285 DOI: 10.32342/2523-4463-2023-2-26/1-20 T ranslation has tremendous cultural value both as a process and as a finished good.In addition to being influenced by a variety of cultural elements, translation fosters and partially reflects cultural development.The scope and mode of translation activities are determined by national culture, as shown by the following aspects: Activities involving translation are severely constrained by the openness of national psychology; the scope of translation work is determined by the level of cultural demand; the political system, belonging to institutional and behavioral cultures, has some influence on how translation tasks are carried out; the form of translation changes depending on the culture's strengths and weaknesses; translation also changes as cultures evolve and change.
Given that translation is a process of interaction between language and culture, Susan Bassnett, Andre Lefevere, and other scholars focused on the mode of operation of culture in literary translation in the late 1980s and proposed the term "cultural turn" on the basis of cultural studies.The cultural turn in translation studies began with the release of the book "Translation, History, and Culture", which the two researchers co-authored [Bassnett, Lefevere, 1990].The book makes the point that translation studies have shifted away from conventional formalist techniques and towards cultural studies, such as a more comprehensive context, history, and tradition.The purpose of translation studies has been redefined, and the source and target languages' texts and cultures are its objects.As a result, translation studies can now both adhere to and go beyond the linguistics study approach.In light of this context, fields like linguistic culturology and cultural translatology have increasingly emerged.The lacunarity phenomenon of cross-cultural communication is a result of these disciplines' observations that, in translation studies, when two languages are compared, there is something in one language that is not understood, incomprehensible, and easily misunderstood by the recipients of foreign cultures.For linguists, solving the problem of how to resolve cultural conflicts and fill in the lacunas in cross-cultural communication has become a top priority.
Linguists have been interested in the linguistic phenomenon of lacunarity since the early 1950s because it highlights the distinctions and differences between various language systems.It is not difficult to determine that the research on the lacunarity phenomenon in modern linguistics primarily focuses on the nature, structure, development, correlation, and correlation of terms in linguistic studies, as well as the formulation of translation methods in translation studies.As semiotics, cognitive psychology, and other fields have matured in recent years, scholars have started to explain the lacunarity phenomenon from the standpoint of cognitive mechanisms.
In Slavic linguistics, phrases like realities, words with cultural component, words with zero equivalent, background words, linguocultural vocabulary, non-translatable words, exoticisms, barbarisms, ethnographisms, localisms, etc., are used to describe this lacunarity phenomenon.The meaning of these terms' extralinguistic parts contains the nation's culture, life, customs, traditions, etc., which is the core of the nation and culture, and whose existence is an integral part of the national marking unit.They were developed out of linguists' need to express the unique phenomena in the national language.However, until now there has not yet been a unified vocabulary translation term that reflects national and cultural characteristics.The most frequently used terms are non-equivalent words, reality, and lacuna, whose conceptual relevance is also the main subject of study and debate by linguists, confirming the idea of a complex relationship between language and culture.Let us attempt to compare and contrast the three: About reality.According to the definition of the Swiss linguist Werner Koller, realities are words and phrases that refer to political, social, cultural, and geographical phenomena and objects that are specific to each people [Мукатаєва, 2022, p. 175].R. P. Zorivchak in work "Reality and Translation" defines realities as single words and multi-morpheme units, which main lexical meaning is the traditionally fixed national research information complex, alien to the objective reality of the language of the one who perceives it [Зорівчак, 1989, p. 58].Another Ukrainian translation theorist V. V. Koptilov defines these lexemes as denoting certain objects or phenomena that are unknown to the target language.When comparing two languages, words-realities play a decisive role because the cultures and customs of peoples can be radically different, and they do not have fixed words to express meaning [Коптілов, 2003. p. 65].According to the definitions of S. Vlakhov and S. Florin, realities are words and phrases that denote objects or phenomena inherent in the language of one nation and do not have exact counterparts in other languages [Vlahov, Florin, 1980, p. 42], at the same time, in creating specific categories of realities, they rely on the following criteria: thematic division; local division (depending on country and language affiliation); time division and translation division.Ukrainian scholar Y.V. Mukatayeva writes that realities in their origin reflect multifaceted phenomena, combining in their form both material (household items) and spiritual (language, customs) values.From a philological point of view, they can be divided into two groups, namely: reality as a phenomenon or material thing that does not exist in the everyday life of other nations, and reality as a lexical unit that explains a certain phenomenon or object [Мукатаєва, 2022, p. 175].
About non-equivalent words.According to researchers, non-equivalent words are those that serve to express concepts that are absent in another culture and another language, words related to cultural elements characteristic only in culture 'A' and absent in culture 'B', as well as words that do not have translation into another language, that is, having non-equivalents outside the language to which they belong [Руденко, Гаврилова, 2019, p. 95].Zorivchak defines non-equivalent words by comparing them with realities.In her opinion, "non-equivalent words" is much broader than the semantic field of the concept of "reality", which corresponds only to cases of lexico-subject nonequivalence.Obviously, for one particular language, all realities are included in the scope of the non-equivalent words.But non-equivalent words also include some proverbs and common sayings, unique lexemes with exceptionally rich semantic meaning relating to distinctions between the linguistic group and the outside world, and other cases of lexico-semantic nonequivalence [Зорівчак, 1989, p. 65]. A. Brons'ka, considering the peculiarities of the lingua-cultural aspect in teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language, considers that among the words with a cultural component exist non-equivalent words that cannot be semantized by simple translation [Бронська, 2000].There are also words that are similar to nonequivalent words; they coincide in two languages in their denotations (i.e., objective content), but do not coincide in their connotations (i.e., emotional and aesthetic associations) [Тупиця, Зімакова, 2012, p. 254].The broadest is the concept of "non-equivalent words", lexical units that do not have equivalents (both full and partial) among the lexical units of another language.Non-equivalent words include realities, temporary non-equivalents, random non-equivalents, and structural exoticisms [Бронська, 2000, p. 157].Ukrainian scholar S. M. Pakhomova believes that non-equivalent words are an open dynamic system consisting of a relatively stable core and a variable part, which can be replenished with new words, as well as reduced by lexical units, which for various reasons lose their non-equivalence [Пахомова, 2014, p. 72].
About lacuna.The term "lacuna" directly to linguistics was first introduced by French linguists J. Vinay and J. Darbelnet, who defined lacuna as a phenomenon that occurs when a word of one language has no correspondence in another [Vinay, Darbelnet, 1958].According to the point of view of G.A. Antipov and O.A. Donskikh et al., lacuna can be linguistic (lexical, grammatical, stylistic) and cultural (ethnographic, psychological, etc.).In addition, lacuna can be both intercultural or interlingual (arising in the process of intercultural communication), and intracultural (intralingual) [Antipov at all, 1989, p, 89].Ukrainian scholar Tatyana Bondar believes that lacuna corresponds to non-equivalent units, which indicate the absence of corresponding concepts in the conceptual spheres of those peoples.Therefore, whole texts are sometimes needed to describe cultural, nationally specific concepts.The greater the "cultural distance" between peoples, the more comments are required when filling lacunas and the more difficult it is to transfer non-equivalent units [Бондар, 2015, p. 19].
The three are correlated as follows: 1.The scope of concepts is different.The scope of reality is the smallest.The majority of them are nouns or phrases that describe things or events that are exclusive to the country.In addition to reality, other subsystems of non-equivalent words include terminology, interjections, exotics, address forms, sound words, etc. Taking into account the above-mentioned approaches to the interpretation of the concept of non-equivalent words, we follow Zorivchak's view to distinguish between the concepts of "non-equivalent words" and "reality", all realities are non-equivalent, but not all non-equivalent words are realities [Зорівчак, 1989].The idea of lacuna has the broadest application, not just in linguistic and cultural studies, but in all facets of life, as we all know.Depending on the discipline to which it is applied, such as botany, anatomy, physiology, psychology, library science, or even shipbuilding, the phrase can have a range of meanings.Regarding the linguistics lacunas, its conceptual range also goes beyond reality and non-equivalent words.It is clear from the classification in linguistics (absolute, relative, interlingual, intralingual, motivated, unmotivated, etc.) that its conceptual scope is now a linguistic phenomenon rather than a lexical unit.2. Term pertinence is different.Reality and non-equivalent words are lexical units for the source language (native language), while a lacuna is a linguistic phenomenon for the target language.3. The nature is different.The reality is the relatively stable unit of each language, that is, the inherent unit of expressing national colors in a language, which does not arise in the binary opposition of two languages, but non-equivalent words are relative and vary according to the difference between two languages.Only in the binary opposition can non-equivalent words of a language be emphasized.This is why it should only be considered in terms of a specific pair of languages.4. Non-equivalent words and lacunas are often found in pairs, and some individuals believe that non-equivalent words and lacunas in different languages are the same thing.However, they have different meanings, and there is no interaction between them.It can only be said that a word in one language cannot find a corresponding translation unit in another language, so the word is a non-equivalent word in the source language in the translation process, resulting in a lacunarity phenomenon in the target language.
According to the above analysis of the idea behind and characteristics of the terms related to the lacunarity phenomenon, from the standpoint of translation teleology, in order to achieve the perfect translation, lacunas in the target language must be compensated (rather than nonequivalent words or reality).However, just like the confusion in the use of terms related to the lacunarity phenomenon, scholars mostly look for ways to translate lacunas using the translation techniques, but such techniques vary from case to case.So far, no unified and comprehensive scheme of lacuna's translation has been formed.Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to provide methodological formulaic solutions to the translation of the lacunarity phenomenon through inductive, deductive, and modeling methods and confirm its feasibility.
Building the whole linguistic image of the world, finding out the corresponding relationship with real life, and filling the lacunas will all fall under the umbrella of linguistics.Because the finding of the lacunarity phenomenon is founded on the contrast between two languages and translation is the process of that contrast, the linguistic research of the aforementioned lacunarity phenomenon is strongly tied to translation.In order to accurately translate the lacuna and express the historical color, nationality, and geographic qualities, there are a few translation criteria that must be followed.The opinions of scholars are typically consistent when comparing translation principles in China and the West.Equivalence theory is the most well-liked and significant translation idea in the West.Alexander Tytler was the first to propose the renowned "equivalent effect" idea [Tytler, 1907].According to him, a successful translation fully transposes the benefits of the original language into the target language, so that speakers of the target language can comprehend and experience things just as clearly and powerfully as speakers of the source language.Three translation guidelines are offered by this definition: first, the translation should give a complete transcript of the idea of the original work; second, the style and manner of writing should be of the same character as that of the original; third, the translation should have all the ease of the original composition [Nida, 2004, p. 19].Later, Andrey Fedorov proposed the theory of "equivalent translation" idea [Fyodorov, 2002]."Textual equivalence" was postulated by J.C. Catford [1965] and "functional equivalence" by Eugene Nida [2004].
In China, Yan Fu (严复), an enlightened thinker in the late Qing Dynasty at the end of the 19th century, put forward the translation principles of "faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance" (信, 达, 雅) [Yao Dawei, 2007].The terms "faithfulness," "expressiveness," and "elegance" allude to how true to the original text the translation is, how simple it is to grasp, and how literary talent is demonstrated in the translation.For almost a century, Yan's standard has dominated the field of Chinese translation, influencing subsequent translators and advancing the growth of translation work in China.Chinese translation standards also exhibit a strong humanistic bent.This is a result of widespread literary translation in China.The end of the 19th century saw remarkable growth in the translation of foreign literature.The majority of those working in translation at the period were literary experts like Fu Lei (傅雷) and Lu Xun (鲁迅), who promoted "spiritual similarity of articles" and "faithfulness rather than fluency" respectively [Yang Wenwei, 2010, p. 38].All the translation theorists discussed translation issues from the perspective of literature or aesthetics.
They consider "faithfulness" to be the main translation requirement, meaning that the translation must accurately reflect the source text.Even though multi-disciplines like culturology and aesthetics are developing in an integrated manner and contemporary Chinese and Western translation standards tend to be diverse, in terms of translation principles, everyone seems to be interested in ideas like "seeking faithfulness", "semantic equivalence" and "pragmatic correspondence".The balance of semantic components and functions from the text's content to form, as influenced by translators, is what is stressed.Both Yan Fu and Tytler [1907] place a strong emphasis on author and reader orientation in their guiding principles, specifically, "faithfulness" refers to the original text's ability to be transmitted (transmissibility) while "expressiveness" refers to the target text's ability to be read (acceptability).
Based on the foregoing study, we feel that the translation's adequacy determines its quality and serves as its main guiding factor.The translation must be adequate in terms of transmissibility, acceptability, and similarity, as well as the three orientations of the original author, reader, and translator.The idea of transmissibility, which focuses on the author's goal orientation, is crucial in translation.Language expresses any information through both form and substance.The use of words, organization, and rhetoric all make up the so-called "form" of a piece.This can occur when the target language and the source language convey ideas differently: two languages express the same idea, but they use different forms, or the same forms express completely different concepts.The reader's ability to completely understand the translation and the clarity and ease of understanding of the target material are both considered aspects of acceptability.Language and cultural issues are among the elements that contribute to poorly accepted translations.Similarity means that the translation should strive to be similar to the original.It is mainly oriented towards the translator's goal, giving the translator three points of reference: Formal similarity, which denotes that the translation's use of words, sentence structure, expression strategies, and figurative coinage is compatible with that of the original text; Stylistic similarity means that the translation must attempt to utilize a literary form that is stylistically comparable to the original; Functional similarity refers to how closely the translation adheres to the original text's conceptual and interpersonal functions.These features of "adequacy" can be seen in numerous, multi-level ways in these elements [Yan Jinzhong, 2009].
Therefore, we suggest building the lacuna's translation model in modern linguistics in accordance with the idea of adequacy.
The research object for the lacuna's translation model is the linguistic lacunas in literary works, including: 1. Semantic lacunas brought on by language systems and rhetorical devices.2. Pragmatic lacunas brought on by the historical context and cultural variations [Li Yanxue, 2023, p. 101].
The model's research task is to create suitable translation strategies and methods based on different lexical lacunas, use particular translation techniques to fill the lacuna while taking into consideration the three author, translator, and reader orientations, i.e., the original author's intention to use words and their cultural connotations, the play of the translator's cognition and subjective consciousness, and the effect of readers acceptance in order to make the translation in the aesthetic value, text equivalent, and functional correspondence of three aspects of harmony and unity.
The theoretical foundation of the model, as seen from the viewpoint of certain disciplines, includes not just translation studies but also diverse ideas of linguistic and cultural qualities from disciplines like culturology, general linguistics, language culturology, and others.Additionally, the approach mixes reader-focused with reception aesthetics.In terms of culturology, the Chinese cultural hierarchy theory divides the lexical lacunas into lexical lacunas of material culture, conceptual culture, behavioral culture, and institutional culture.As a result of the different classifications of lacunas, the model's choice of translation methods and translation techniques varies as well.In terms of philology, it adopts L.S. Barchudarov's equivalence theory [Barchudarov, 1975] and the concept of functional correspondence from Juliane House's model of translation quality assessment to balance semantic equivalence in language translation units and pragmatic correspondence [House, 1977].Specifically, there are six semantic equivalence levels of translation units (level of phonemes/graphemes, words, phrases, sentences, and text), seven functional dimensions of the text (subject matter, social action, author's provenance and stance, social role relationship, social attitude, medium, participation).To achieve the reducibility of the original image and the readability of the translation, the model also uses the six organization principles of Gestalt psychology [Koffka, 2010] (the principle of resemblance, closure, figure and background, proximity, continuity, and simplicity).
The nature of the lacuna's translation model in modern linguistics.The model is comprehensive and embodied in two dimensions, just as translatology itself, as it is founded on the theory of translatology.The initial one is interpretive.The lacuna's translation model primarily explains the justification for translation solutions involving cultural conflicts, including the model's theoretical foundations, ideas for compensating lexical lacunas, and various translation techniques in the face of anomalous phenomena in cultural translation.The second one is descriptive.The model primarily describes how the lacunarity phenomenon is translated as well as numerous translation strategies that can be built depending on unique cultural settings and translation traditions.Accordingly, the lacuna's translation model research in modern linguistics is not a theoretical framework of psycholinguistics devoted to the issue of interaction of language culture and the development problem of a synergetic concept of the continuum of the translation space, but rather, it is a multi-dimensional and formulaic translation solution proposed for the first time based on the difficulty of translating the lacunarity phenomena and using the method of combining multiple theories.This is the urgency and novelty of the research.
Since the lacuna's translation model in modern linguistics is a combination of descriptive research and interpretive research, it calls for the use of both inductive and deductive logic (induction and deduction).Naturally, the research methods of this translation model also use linguistic research methods, including contrastive analysis, sememe analysis, transformation analysis, statistics, modeling, and so on.
Thereby, we define it as follows: the lacuna's translation model in modern linguistics is a descriptive and interpretative translation model established by inductive, deductive, and other linguistic and translation research methods, which under the direction of Barchudarov's equivalence theory [Barchudarov, 1975] of translation units, Juliane House's functional correspondence [House, 1977], and Gestalt's psychological principle, aims to give translators a solution to the linguistic (semantic and pragmatic) lacuna's translation and unify the translation in three areas: text equivalence, aesthetic value, and functional correspondence.
Finally, we demonstrate the viability of the lacuna's translation model in modern linguistics by translating lexical lacunas in Xiao Hong's novel "Tales of Hulan River" and analyzing their English translation by H. Goldblatt.[Goldblatt, 1988, p. 1].

... After he has gone into his room at the inn, removed his dog-skin cap with earflaps, and smoked a pipeful of tobacco, he reaches out for a steamed bun; the back of his hand is a mass of cracked, chapped skin
It can be seen from the above translation of "狗皮帽子", the target readers who have never seen it before can understand the cap with a special shape is made of dog skin.In fact, it is not a kind of ordinary cap, but an exceptional one with earflaps and it only exists in the northeast region of China.Therefore, from the perspective of the conceptual distinction of terms related to the lacunarity phenomenon, it is a noun that represents objects or phenomena related to the history, culture, economy and life of a country, that is, it is the reality for Chinese, and in the English target language, it has created a lexical lacuna of material cultural.
We use the lacuna's translation model in modern linguistics to test whether Howard Goldblatt's translation of "dog-skin cap with earflaps" is adequate.First, in terms of semantic equivalence, from the perspective of the six-level equivalence theory of translation units, "dogskin cap" is the equivalent of "狗皮帽子" at the morpheme (Chinese characters) level, while adding "with earflaps" destroys the level of semantic equivalence.Second, in terms of functional correspondence of text, Julianе House argues that equivalence is not formal, syntactic and lexical similarity, but functional and pragmatic correspondence [House, 1977].The translation of "with earflaps" also follows the dimension of language register "subject matter (geographical conditions, historical background)" in the 7 dimensions of its textual functional correspondence.In the original text, the shape has not been written yet, but "with earflaps" is the unique feature of this cap.In the Northeast region of China, the winter is very cold, in which this cap has become an important tool for people to keep warm.In order to restore the shape of this special cap, the translator adds the information "with earflaps" to make the foreign readers who live in Western country or tropical zone easy to have an intuitive feeling, as if they could feel the warmth of that cap in such cold winter in the North wind.Third, in terms of the organization principles of Gestalt, its psychological organization principle is conducive to the reconstruction of the image.The translator can actively absorb an original text without common cognition through aesthetic and cognitive approaches, so as to form an overall pattern with linguistic meaning and artistic images in his mind, and then reconstruct this pattern with the linguistic structure of the target language.In the end, the aesthetic characteristics of literary works are reproduced for readers in the translation.The principle of closure means that the images in the human mind tend to pursue a complete sense of wholeness.When people see an irregular or incomplete shape, an internal tension will be generated, forcing the cerebral cortex to exercise nervously to fill the defect, make it gestalt, and stimulate the further creative function of the cognitive subject.In this case, if by the literal meaning, "狗皮帽子" should be translated as "dog-skin cap", it will not make foreign readers fully understand what kind of hat it is, nor will it highlight the cold weather below, so the translator should again think about the acceptability of readers and complement the image to be output in accordance with the Gestalt closure principle.Therefore, by using the lacuna's translation model, we believe that the translation -"dog-skin cap with earflaps" complements the subject matter of the lexical function under the condition of breaking the semantic equivalence at the morpheme level, which is also in line with the principle of closure in the organization principles of Gestalt, and provides the reader with closed imagery without gaps, which can be described as an adequacy translation.
TT: "The hearts of wolves and the lungs of wild dogs... the people 'dis' year all have the hearts of wolves and the lungs of wild dogs.They eat good food and drink good wine, and anyone who tries to be a good man in times like 'dis' is a bastard and a queer jack rabbit..." [Goldblatt, 1988, p. 205].
In the example sentence, the speaker -Second Uncle You is an old servant of "my home", he represents the thoughts and characteristics of farmers and servants at that particular time.
The above example is the words uttered by Second Uncle You after he is beaten by "my" father.Since Second Uncle You is a farmer who has no access to education, his language is quite vulgar.
"狼心狗肺" is a Chinese four-character idiom, which belongs to the Chinese non-equivalent words, in the target language -English, it has created a lexical lacuna of conceptual culture.Many allusive idioms cannot be understood directly from the literal meaning, and integrity and context should be considered to infer their true meaning from the context.This shows that allusion idioms are highly metaphorical.This idiom describes a person as cruel and unscrupulous, but Goldblatt literally translated it as "The hearts of wolves and the lungs of wild dogs."This is an invalid translation and the hidden meaning behind the idiom has not been compensated for.According to the text functional correspondence theory of the lacuna's translation model, translators should first complement the complete image and text function of lexical lacunas, then follow the equivalence of a certain translation unit level, and use the Gestalt psychological organization principle to determine the formal beauty of the target text.Therefore, referring to the triple theory of the model, we propose to translate it into "Cruel as wolves and unscrupulous as dingo".In terms of text functional correspondence, we complement the "social role relationship" and "social attitude" in the functional dimension of the translated text, which can restore the rough speech of the speaker to a certain extent, reflect the identity information, and express the emotional attitude of language use.From the perspective of reception aesthetics, the translation form refers to the similarity principle and the simplicity principle in the organization principle of Gestalt: the simplicity principle is embodied in that while retaining the images of "dog" and "wolf" in the original text, the "heart" and "lung" which are easy for foreign readers to misunderstand are deleted.The principle of similarity is reflected in two aspects, one is the similarity of the original image, for example, in contemporary life, whether in China or other countries, "dog" gives the impression of loyalty and loveliness, which does not match "unscrupulous", so we chose the word "dingo (wild dog)" to promote the similarity of the image.The second is the similarity of the original format.In Chinese idioms, most of them are four characters, antithetical and neat.The translation uses the format of adjective + as + noun, and uses "and" to link the two components so that the translation format is similar to the original.
TT: Folding her arms, old Mrs. Yang exclaimed: "Strong-willed!She's got quite a temper.But now she's disgraced herself, and I'm surprised her temper hasn't killed her.That girl is just no good.Just look at those eyes, how big they are!I said long ago that she'd never come to any good" [Goldblatt, 1988, p. 223].
Different from the previous research on the lacunarity phenomenon, which was limited to the field of nouns, the inclusion of verbs and verb phrases in the research scope of this phenomenon is another breakthrough in the lacuna's translation model.We believe that verbs that reflect deviations in the understanding of behavioral habits in both cultures should also be included in non-equivalent words, such as the Greeks giving a thumbs up to indicate enough, and the Bulgarians nodding to indicate negation.Behind the action also contain the emotional attitude of the person who made the action, if it is not understood and translated properly, it will cause a lexical lacuna of behavioral culture in the target language.
From the perspective of semantic equivalence, functional correspondence, and reception aesthetics, Goldblatt's translation "肩膀一抱 -folding her arms" is adequate.Xiao Hong, the author of this example, vividly shows the behavior and habits of peasants in northeast China through the description of a large number of actions, which are different from intellectuals, have the characteristics of the times, and also reflect different personality characteristics."Folding her arms" is the classic action of village women when they gossip, and behind this action expresses the surprise and disapproval of women when they speak ill of people behind their backs.From the perspective of semantic equivalence, the translator uses phrases as translation units to translate them literally.From the perspective of functional equivalence, he adds the word "exclaimed" to express the emotions of old Mrs. Yang when she did the action, which is in line with the dimension of "social attitude" among the 7 functional dimensions of the text.From the perspective of reception aesthetics, this technique of amplification translation conforms to the continuity organization principle of Gestalt.The principle of continuity means that if there is an intersection between perceived elements, they are more inclined to be divided into a group in the perception of the cognitive subject.This principle enhances people's perception of grouped information and creates an order for perceptual processing.This continuity principle should also be taken into account in terms of readers' perception and experience of reading the translated text.In this example, "exclaimed" and "folding her arms" remain continuous in the sentence and can be perceived as a whole by the readers, thus achieving the overall meaning of the Chinese verb phrase in a two-in-one way.2015, p. 164].

Example 4:
TT: Then he would raise his head and begin cursing at the sparrow, which by then had already flown past.The gist of his comments would have to do with how the sparrow shouldn't have sent its droppings down on him, but should have aimed instead at someone wearing silks and satins [Goldblatt, 1988, p. 185].
The appellation is an indicator of information transmitted by both parties to the communication, usually containing the connotation of power, and thus reflecting the status, identity, cultivation, emotions, and mutual relations of the two sides of the communication.According to statistics, the Chinese people who emphasize a person's status and human relations have developed more than 5000 appellation words, which do not include temporary creative appellation terms, and it is more complicated in dynamic communication.However, Western cultural habits focus on "people-oriented", they think that the name is only a symbol used, so the number of appellations is small, but the meaning is broad.Due to the difference in Chinese and Western cultures, the composition of the appellation system is also different, which leads to the inability to find a completely equivalent substitute in the appellation relationship when the two languages are converted to each other, thus forming a lacuna."穿绸穿缎的人 -someone wearing silks and satins" originally describes the beautiful and luxurious dress of a person, but here it constitutes a compound appellation, referring to the rich people from wealthy families.Therefore, for both English and Chinese languages, the phrase cannot express the full meaning through literal translation alone, and it is a non-equivalent word in Chinese (incomplete equivalence), resulting in a lexical lacuna of institutional culture in English.
We modify this lacuna's translation by selecting appropriate reference indicators from our translation model.First, analyzing the semantic equivalence of the translation unit, Goldblatt uses literal translation to achieve the semantic equivalence of the morpheme level, but for English readers, the hidden meaning behind the silk and satin is not highlighted.So from the 7 dimensions of the text functional correspondence, we need to add some dimensions.Through the context, we know that Second Uncle You is a conceited and inferior person, and he scolds the birds because the birds have dropped on him, a poor man, and not on the rich.Here, through the contrast of the identities of the poor and the rich, the mentality of the speaker "hating the rich" is expressed, so here according to the 7 textual functional dimensions proposed by Juliane House [House, 1977], we need to supplement the dimension of "social role relationship".Then, we can use the combination of amplification and literal translation to translate it as "someone wealthy wearing silks and satins", but the simplicity principle of Gestalt always reminds the translator that when there is a lacuna due to cultural differences and language characteristics, it is necessary to delete part of the original content (discard certain content or rhetoric) in the translation to achieve the accurate transmission of images.If the translation of lexical units is too long, the reader's reading rhythm will be interrupted.Following this aesthetic principle, we recommend using the translation techniques -replacement, thus replacing "someone wearing silks and satins" with the English colloquial "one-percenters".On the one hand, one-percenters means that people from a well-off family from a young age, are in line with the connotation of "people in silk and satin", on the other hand, the word composition of one-percenters itself is in the form of percentages, which better fits the speaker's complaints about the gap between rich and poor.Although such a translation loses some semantic equivalence, the functional correspondence is completed, and the translation is short and suitable for English readers to understand.
Through the meta-theoretical analysis of the lacuna's translation model in modern linguistics and its application in practical literary translation, we can conclude that: the model is a patterned innovation and attempt in the field of translation based on linguistic research, which can offer a set of formulaic reference standards for translators to translate lexical lacunas, has practical methodological significance.The reasons for the conclusion are as follows: First, the establishment of the model is based on the linguistic research on the concept of "lacuna", including a detailed analysis of the correlation of terms such as "reality", "non-equivalent words" and "lacuna", and an in-depth study of their definition, nature, classification and semantic scope; Second, the model is used on the "adequacy" principle of translation, which includes transmissibility, similarity, and acceptability taking into consideration the original-author orientation as well as the readertranslator orientation.It is precisely because this principle is considered by every participant in translation activities, hence, it has a certain degree of firmness and universality, which can make the translation harmonious and unified in three aspects: aesthetic value, text equivalence, and functional correspondence.Third, the three theories of the model are complementary.From the standpoint of the linguistic school, Barchudarov proposed 6 semantic equivalence theories of language translation units, which paid more attention to the equivalence of the text in translation and ignored the communicative and aesthetic functions of the text.The 7 functional dimensions mentioned by Juliane House in the concept of functional correspondence of text can be used as a pragmatic complement to the equivalence theory of the former.Meanwhile, the lacuna's translation model in modern linguistics, by using the 6 organization principles of Gestalt Psychology, abolishes the proposition of "text-centered theory", considers the needs of the recipient, and emphasizes the adjustment mechanism of aesthetic consciousness of subject to artistic works.It can be said that the triple theory provides a variety of reference indicators for translators, and they can freely combine suitable reference indicators in the filling of lexical lacunas represented by material culture, behavioral culture, institutional culture, and conceptual culture, and depending on the type of lacuna use the translation methods like transformational, interlinear, pragmatic translation, at the same time combine the transcription, transliteration, replacement, omission, amplification, reconstructing, permutations, explanations in the text and another translation techniques, which reflects the flexibility of the translation model.However, the lexical lacunas themselves can be understood as a defective vocabulary in the target language, and the primary purpose of the translator should be to compensate for or fill this defect, to let the reader understand "what does this mean", then this makes the functional correspondence of the lacuna's translation more important.In other words, the lacuna's translation model in modern linguistics requires the translator to pay more attention to pragmatic function and aesthetic effect when using it, if it is necessary, translators have to abandon the semantic equivalence of low-level translation units and strive for the equivalence of high level.
Creating a model plane or three-dimensional diagram is the first step in further research; The second is examining the model's applicability and adaptability to various cultural conflict coping strategies (cultural adaptation: cultural assimilation, cultural neutralization, cultural beautification, and cultural transformation) in conjunction with the disciplines of linguistic culturology and cultural translation; The third, on the whole, the text function correspondence theory dominates the equivalence theory of translation units and Gestalt organization principles, and at the same time, it is restricted by them in the formation of translation.The relationship between the main and secondary alterations of the model's triple theory in different forms of lexical lacunas and the application regularity of related translation techniques, however, needs to be further investigated due to insufficient translation practice.
The cultural turn makes translation shift from word -text to cultural register.According to the view of cultural translation, culture serves as the translational unit.The lacunarity phenomenon, which is a linguistic and cultural occurrence when two languages are compared, has grown into a significant issue that translators must resolve.Therefore, the urgency of this research has changed to how to eliminate cultural conflict and fill up lexical lacunas.In this paper, we first clarify the similarities and differences of terms related to the lacunarity phenomenon from the perspective of their relevance.Then, aiming at the compensation of linguistic lacunas (semantic and pragmatic) in literary works, we adopt inductive, deductive, and modeling research methods according to the adequacy principle of translation, and put forward for the first time the concept of constructing the lacuna's translation model in modern linguistics (novelty), with the purpose of building a complete set of systematic solutions to the translation problem of this phenomenon, so as to make the translation harmonious and unified in three aspects: aesthetic value, text equivalence, and functional correspondence.
We can draw this conclusion from the meta-theoretical analysis of the lacuna's translation model in modern linguistics and its use in the translation of the book "Tales of Hulan River" by Chinese author Xiao Hong: The model is a systematic innovation and endeavor in the field of translation based on linguistic research, and it has practical methodological importance.It can provide a set of formulaic reference standards for translators to interpret lexical lacunas.The following are the justifications for the conclusion: First, the model's foundation is linguistic research on the concept of "lacuna", including the examination of the relationships between terms such as "reality", "non-equivalent words", and "lacuna", as well as the investigation of their definition, nature, classification, and semantic range; Second, the model adheres to the "adequacy" principle of translation, which comprises acceptability, similarity, and transmissibility while taking into account both the reader-translator and original-author orientations.This approach is robust and universal exactly because it takes into account every side involved in the translation process; Third, the model's three theories work well together.L. S. Barchudarov developed 6 levels of semantic equivalence for language translation units, which focused more on the text's equivalent in translation and disregarded the text's communicative and aesthetic purposes.As a pragmatic addition to the equivalency theory of the former, the 7 functional dimensions outlined by Juliane House in the idea of functional correspondence of text can be applied.Meanwhile, by using the 6 organization principles of Gestalt psychology, the lacuna's translation model in modern linguistics incorporates the translation form and subjective feelings into the reference mechanism from the needs of the reader as the subject of aesthetic meaning.It can be said that the triple theory offers a variety of reference indicators for translators, and they are free to combine suitable reference indicators in the filling of lexical lacunas represented by material culture, behavioral culture, institutional culture, and conceptual culture.According to the different types of lacunas, they can use translation methods such as transformational, interlinear, pragmatic translation, as well as by combining transcription, transliteration, replacement, omission, amplification, reconstructing, permutations, explanations in the text and other translation techniques, which reflects the flexibility of the translation model.However, the lexical lacunas themselves can be interpreted as a defective vocabulary in the target language, and the primary goal of the translator should be to compensate for or fill this defect, to let the reader understand "what does this mean", then the functional correspondence of the lacuna's translation becomes more important.In other words, the lacuna's translation model in modern linguistics requires the translator to pay more attention to pragmatic function and aesthetic effect; when necessary, translators must abandon low-level semantic equivalence and strive for high-level equivalence.