On The English Translation Of Cultural Factors In Fortress Besieged From The Perspective Of Cultural Schema Theory

As part of schema theory, cultural schema refers to blocks of cultural knowledgestructure stored in human brain, which is based on previous experience and can beinvoked to perceive and comprehend various cultural phenomena in human society.With the interdisciplinary development of translation studies, the application ofcultural schema theory to translation studies will better explain the translation processof the translator, and help to broaden the horizon of translation studies as well.Fortress Besieged, a famous modern Chinese novel, is characterized by itshumorous language and rich cultural connotations. Nowadays, researches on theEnglish version mainly focus on humor translation, metaphor translation, translation ofthe foregrounded language and culture-loaded words, and translation strategies ormethods and so on. Therefore, a comprehensive and systematic study on the translationof the cultural connotations from the perspective of cultural schema theory helps topromote the spread of Chinese culture through translation.This thesis presents a study of the English translation of cultural factors inFortress Besieged from the perspective of cultural schema theory. Above all, theapplication of cultural schema theory to translation and the concern on the translationreaders of readers’ response theory are discussed from the following three aspects,with a view to laying the theoretical foundation of the later study. First, define thenature of translation. The author regards translation as the translator’s mental activitywhich is oriented to the translation readers and intended to promote cross-culturalcommunication. Second, compare the cultural schemata between China and Englishcountries and also state their influence upon translation. Due to the similarity anddifference between Chinese culture and English culture, there are basically three casesof cultural schema, namely, cultural schema correspondence, cultural schema conflictand cultural schema default. Especially, the influence on translation exerted by thelater two cases becomes the main challenge facing the translator. Third, illustrate thestrategies to deal with cultural schema in translation. The translator should adopt thestrategy of activating and adjusting or creating cultural schemata by taking thetranslation readers into full consideration so as to facilitate their comprehension of theoriginal culture. And then, this thesis takes the English version of Fortress Besieged,translated by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao, as a case study. The author analyzeshow the translators delivered the rich cultural connotations of the source text to the translation readers in translating the five types of cultural factors: ecological culturalfactors, material cultural factors, religious cultural factors, social cultural factors andlinguistic cultural factors from the aspects of cultural schema conflict and culturalschema default, and explores the concrete translation methods employed by thetranslators of Fortress Besieged. Finally, the author finds that the translatorseffectively overcame the difficulties caused by cultural schema conflict and culturalschema default by employing various available translation methods like literaltranslation, free translation, transliteration, literal translation with note, liberaltranslation with note and so on, especially making full use of notes, hence activatingand adjusting the pre-existing cultural schemata of the translation readers or buildingup new cultural schemata for them, which successfully facilitates the translationreaders’ comprehension of the source text and the spread of Chinese culture, thusproving the version as a worthy one.