On Translation Of Personal Names, Courtesy Names And Literary Names In Hong Lou Meng From The Perspective Of Cultural Schemata

People's names are symbols that represent and refer to members of a social community, but they are not merely linguistic signs. Influenced by social, historical and cultural factors, names are both cultural and social signs. Language expresses, embodies and symbolizes cultural reality. Therefore, we can say that they are carriers of culture. Accordingly, cross-cultural communication can not succeed without the exchange of names. As a result, the translation of people's names is of great significance in cross-cultural communication. Yet, it is by no means an easy task as it a transforming of cultural information.Hong Lou Meng, a well-known classical novel in China, is a treasure of Chinese culture. The personal names, courtesy names as well as the literary names of the characters in the novel embody and symbolize cultural realities. Since English and Chinese cultures share only a small number of similarities, the major difficulty in translating personal names, courtesy names and literary names in Hong Lou Meng lies in the comprehension of the embedded cultural information.Schema theory emphasizes the vital role that prior knowledge plays in comprehension. It is perceived that people come to understand new information by activating their relevant schemata (background knowledge) in their mind. The schema theory also sheds light on the act of translating, as translation is in fact a process of comprehension and expression. This thesis illustrates the role that cultural schemata have played in the process of decoding and re-encoding of the cultural information that lies behind personal names, courtesy names and literary names in Hong Lou Meng. Based on the theory of cultural schemata, the thesis reveals that the complicated translation process is in nature a process of transferring certain schemata with culture-specific features, in the SL (source language) to the corresponding cultural-specific schemata in the TL (target language). In this process, the translator activates his or her own SL-based cultural schemata in order to facilitate comprehension and reconstruct the information in accordance with the cultural schemata in the TL text to be accessed by the potential TL readers. Furthermore, the cognitive explanation of cultural schema defaults and conflicts are also discussed. These defaults and conflicts occur because the TL readers are not supposed to be the SL writer's intended readers who are members of the same cultural community and therefore make it possible for the author to omit shared cultural knowledge. In other words, cultural schema conflicts represent the conflicts between the SL readers'pre-existing knowledge and the TL readers'lack thereof.Based on the above theoretical analysis, this paper illustrates the thesis in the following parts: Chapter 1 is a general introduction to cultural schemata, one of representative types of content schemata, mainly with regard to the definition and application to translation.Chapter 2 explains in depth the relationships between cultural schemata and translation.Chapter 3 compares the Chinese and English naming systems. The comparison is helpful for the illustration of Chapter 4 in so far as it traces the origin of cultural discrepancies encoded in the personal names, courtesy names and literary names.Chapter 4 illustrates the translation of personal names, courtesy names and literary names in Hong Lou Meng from the perspective of cognitive cultural schemata. This represents the application of cultural schemata to the translation process.