A Study Of The English Translation Of Chinese Legislative Texts Based On The Schema Theory

It is desired that more Chinese legislative texts be translated into English with better quality. Studies on the translation of legislations from the perspective of cognitive science are few. Schema theory is significant in cognitive science and can be used to guide the act of translation. In this thesis, the author applies schema theory into the translation of Chinese legislative texts through four steps:Firstly, the author reveals the link between schema theory and the act of translation. Schemata is the knowledge structure in individuals' mind. There are three kinds of schemata involved in reading a text: text schemata, content schemata and language schemata. With certain schemata, the reader could get better understanding of a text and lack of certain schemata leads to distortion or neglect of information in a text, especially in a specialist text. So in producing a text, the writer, if he or she wants the reader to get the meaning, must make the text congruent with certain existing schemata in the reader's mind. As for translation, since the first and third phases of translation process involve interaction between the reader and the text, from the cognitive perspective, schemata function in these phases, but in a much more complicated way. To realize the goal of translation, the translator needs to make appropriate translation strategy in the second phase concerning which kinds of schemata he or she needs to equip himself or herself with and which kinds of schemata in the target text(TT) reader's mind the TT needs to appeal to.Secondly, the author puts forward a schema-based view of translation strategy for translating Chinese legislative texts. The function of translating Chinese legislative text is to make an informative TT. To realize this goal, the translator needs to get as much information as possible in the first phase of translation and make a text not incongruent with the existing language schemata in TT reader's mind in the third phase of translation. For the reason that legislative text falls under the specialist text type, understanding of it requires the translator to have certain content and language schemata, and in the ordinary TT reader's mind, there have been the existing corresponding language schemata which the translator should keep in mind not to disturb.Thirdly, the author illustrates the shared content schemata representing the content of legislative text in both Chinese and English reader's mind, and some of the most conventional expressions in their language schemata.Fourthly, the author puts the schema-based translation strategy in translating Chinese legislative texts into practice with the example of translating “de” structureThis thesis is an attempt to enrich the theoretical study on Chinese legislative text translation and broaden the application of schema theory.