A Study On The Approaches Of Translating Culture-loaded Words In Decoded From The Perspective Of Cultural Schema Theory

Language is the carrier of culture.Language differences bring difficulties toculturalcommunication.Translation can promote information communication and cultural exchange among different nationalities.However,in the process of text conversion,the translation of culture-loaded words has become a difficult problem for translators.Cultural schema is a branch of schema theory,which is a kind of knowledge organization mode about culture existing in human brain through previous experience.This mode of knowledge organization can be invoked to perceive and understand various cultural phenomena in human society.Based on the theory of cultural schema,this thesis explores the approaches of translating culture-loaded words in Decoded.Decoded is an excellent work of the famous Chinese novelist Mai Jia.The novel describes the historical process of nearly one hundred years from the late Qing dynasty to the founding of new China.There are a large number of culture-loaded words with Chinese characteristics.In 2014,Olivia Anna Roving Milburn and Christpher Payne,two British Sinologists,published the English version of the novel and achieved great success in the international literary world.As for the study of the English version,the author of the thesis first reads the novel of both Chinese and English versions carefully and then classifies culture-loaded words in the novel according to the category of cultural schema.It can be clearly seen from the listed table that the culture-loaded words contained in the novel can be divided into three categories:words with corresponding cultural schemata,words with divergent cultural schemata as well as words with vacant schemata.Next,the thesis author analyzes the translation methods of culture-loaded words in novels.Through analysis,the translators of Decoded mainly adopts the literal translation method when translating words with corresponding cultural schema.While translating words with divergent cultural schemata,free translation and substitution are used.Literal translation,transliteration,free translation and omission are used to translate words with vacant cultural schema.Finally,the author analyzes the reasons why translators adopt the above translation methods through the features of cultural schema and the principles of cultural schema transmission.On the one hand,due to the shareability,otherness and comprehensiveness of cultural schema,translators adopt different translation methods.On the other hand,the selection of translation methods is affected by the translators’ accumulation of cultural schemata.The third aspect is that the principle of cultural adaptation and cultural transmission requires translators to fully consider the accumulation of target readers’ cultural schemata and then adopt different translation methods.This paper aims to provide a new reference for the translation of cultureloaded words in Chinese literary works from a new theoretical perspective.At the same time,it also verifies the feasibility of translating culture-loaded words under the guidance of cultural schema theory.