摘要：

《西游记》作为四大名著之一，在中西交流中也是非凡的纽带和桥梁。《西游记》是中国古代佛家，道家，儒家传统礼文化的缩影，其博大精深可见一斑。西方的翻译大家詹尼尔翻译《西游记》，其文学功底深厚至此，对该英译本的研究，有助于加深研究者本身的语言文化修养。作品中会有许多专属于中国文化的精华，让我们分析和探究，詹尼尔大师是如何用地道的英语来解说他对中国文化的理解，如何把译出语通顺易懂地传达给译入语读者的。中国文化和英语文化的不同造成文化空缺处导致词汇空缺，通过詹尼尔的翻译，我们又能总结出相应的翻译策略。此论文中也会详细介绍词汇空缺现象的产生原因，分类，可译性，及翻译方法。对《西游记》翻译的词汇空缺现象翻译方法的分析和探究，有助于在中西交流中发扬中国文化，也对翻译业的发展有重要意义。

关键词：《西游记》英译本；词汇空缺；可译性；翻译方法与策略。

Abstract:

As one of the great four Chinese classics, Journey to the west is a remarkable tie and bridge in the Sino-West exchanges. Journey to the west per se is epitome of Chinese Buddhism, Taoism and the conventional ritual culture. Therefore, the profoundness and extensiveness prove evident. Jenner, the famous western translation master translated the Journey to the West，in a way that exhibited his deep cultural foundation. Probing into this English version helps to deepen my cultivation of language and culture. In works，there must be full of essence that exclusive to china for us to study. How did master Jenner apply idiomatic English to express his understanding of the Chinese culture? It is a process in which he shows how to convey the source language to the target readers in a smooth and understandable way? Difference between Chinese and English culture spawns cultural gap，then generates lexical gap. Fortunately, through Jenner’s translation, we come to sum up the corresponding translation strategies. In this thesis, I will demonstrate exhaustively the reasons, classification, translatability and translation method pertaining to lexical gap. Analysis of and probing into this phenomenon in the English version helps to carry forward Chinese culture, and constitutes remarkable significance to the development of translation industry.

Key words: English version of the Journey to the West; lexical gap; translatability; translation methods and strategies.

1 Introduction
1.1    Background of this thesis
The study of lexical gap is of great vitality, since we are facing the situation as follows. With the accelerated development of society and the shrinkage of globe, exchanges and interaction among distinct cultures will increase, thus the significance of translation will manifest itself in the wake of globalization and the open-door policy. Disparate cultural background and setting in some aspects is definitely posing great challenges to communication among countries due to the fact that different cultures may endow its people with different habits, thinking mode, mentality, and the corresponding values and outlook on the world. Lexical gap per se is ubiquitous as the civilizations differ in origin and something in one country cannot find the equivalence in another.