On The Translation Strategies Of Pharmaceutical And Chemical Text Under The Perspective Of Schema Theory

Based on a six-month field practice of translating Chinese GMP certification materials, thisstudy mainly discusses and analyzes the strategies of translating pharmaceutical and chemicaltext under the perspective of schema theory.Derived from cognitive psychology, schema theory has been gradually applied to thetranslation field as it evolves. Schema refers to the existing knowledge and information stored inhuman brain. The understanding of new information can only be achieved through thecombination of existing schemata with the new information. Two significant steps areinvolved in translation, i.e. comprehension of the original text and conveyance of the targettext. The former refers to decoding of the original schema while the latter means thecorrect recoding of the target schema. Therefore, from the perspective of schema theory,translation is deemed as a conversion process between the schemata of the original languageand the target language.As a branch of scientific and technological text, pharmaceutical and chemical text attachesimportance to the accuracy and normalization of information transmission. Hence, thetranslation of such text requires the translator to actively use the existing schema in his/her brainto correctly understand the original text and produce professional and appropriate translation.Motivated by such a desire, the translator should give full display to his initiatives, accumulatebackground schema of the pharmaceutical and chemical field, use appropriate translationstrategies to build logical relations and realize corresponding conversions between the originalschema and the target schema. Thus the purpose of translation is accomplished.Trough analysis of the characteristics of pharmaceutical and chemical English at lexical,syntax and textual levels, combined with the examples the author sites from her practical experience in translating GMP certificate materials, this report summarizes the translationstrategies respectively at these three levels. Meanwhile, based on the three major categories ofschema, i.e. language schema, content schema and formal schema, the report reiterates that thetranslator should actively accumulate relevant schema and connect them with new informationand knowledge so as to create professional and standard translation. In the end, the authorconcludes the findings gained from the translation practice and this study, aiming to providesome reference for translating pharmaceutical and chemical texts.