On The Translation Of Cultural Default From The Perspective Of Cultural Schema Theory

Since Marcus Tullius Cicero’s time in ancient Rome, translation has been playing an important role in the cultural exchange and the development of national cultures and languages. Attempts to develop a more theoretical and systematic field of studies of this important mechanism of exchange, however, did not commence until the second half of the twentieth century. James S. Holmes’ paper "The Name and Nature of Translation Studies"(1972) marked the maturity of translation studies as an independent discipline. In the following two decades, translation studies witnessed significant development, albeit in which the majority of studies took a comparative view, focusing on the linguistic differences between the source and target language. In the1990s, translation studies had its cultural turn, with a shift from the linguistic level of study to the cultural level. Thus the translation of culture-loaded words emerged as significant field for analysis and debate. In China, Wang Dongfeng(1997) examined the translation of culture-loaded words from the perspective of schema theory and proposes the concept of "cultural default"-the absence of shared cultural background knowledge. It is the schemas the readers possess that facilitate the interpretation of the cultural default. In other words, it is the interpretation of cultural defaults that manifests the abstract cultural schemas which instruct such interpretation. This concept provides researchers with a new way to undertake a closer examination of the cultural issues in translation. Therefore, this dissertation attempts to present a detailed study of the translation of cultural default from the perspective of the cultural schema theory.Schemas, first closely examined by Bartlett in his experiments on memory and recall, are widely accepted as the mental representations that give structure to the mass of past knowledge. They exert great influence on memory and recall through leveling, sharpening and assimilation, and guide text comprehension through the selection of information and interpretation. They are acquired and used by individuals, but at the same time are highly social in the sense that they are shared and distributed inside certain communities, are intrinsically tied to communication, and thus fulfill the role of common referents for individuals within the culturally cohesive group. They are abstract, with no concrete forms. They are not fixed stereotypes; rather they continue to develop against the backdrop of the changing environment, and accumulated experience. Therefore, in inter-cultural communications, the cultural default in the original text can tend to result in comprehension difficulties due to the absence of corresponding schemas. This calls for domesticating translation procedures to bridge the gap. However, more importantly, schemas are culturally specific, especially cultural schemas. They are the schemas that are highly concerned with the cultural aspects of peoples’ acquired knowledge or understanding, filtered through the experience of a certain culture. As such cultural schemas embody or collect key modes of representations within a culture and can be seen as the (abtract) representation of a culture. The exchange of cultures, to some extent, can be seen as the exchange of cultural schemas. Thus cultural schemas are at the core of translation since translation, as inter-cultural communication, is aimed to promote the cultural exchange through introducing the foreign for the development of national language and literature and the formation of cultural identities. The abstract cultural schemas are manifested through the form and interpretation of cultural default expressions. Therefore, foreignization should be a preferred strategy for the translation of cultural default-keeping the original cultural default expressions, thus introducing the foreign cultural schemas into the target culture. At the same time, considering the comprehension difficulties due to the readers’ lack of foreign cultural schemas, some domesticating translation procedures can also be deployed for the rendering of trivial cultural default expressions to facilitate comprehension. Goldblatt’s translation of Big Breasts and Wide Hips (2012) is a good example of such a foreignizing translation and has proved to be a success in the promotion of modern Chinese literature and culture. This is further evidence that supports the author’s view in the translation of cultural default.