An Application Of Cultural Schema In The Translation Of Cuisine Culture In Hong Lou Meng

As one of the four great classic novels in China,Hong Lou Meng is regarded as “the encyclopedia of Chinese traditional culture” containing all-embracing aspects like dress and personal adornment,architecture,food,etiquette,Chinese Traditional Medicine,classical Chinese poetry and so on,apart from the mainline of love.Hong Lou Meng presents readers a panorama of recipes,a miniature of the profound Chinese cuisine culture.In the current cultural globalization,cultural exchange is indispensable,in which the translation of Chinese literature plays an important role.There exist more than 60 translation versions;two versions(the version of Yang Xianyi and his wife Gladys Yang,the version of British sinologist David Hawkes and his son-in-law John Minford)are so widely acclaimed that many scholars conduct their research on these two.Conforming to current upsurge of health preservation and the typical cuisine culture in Hong Lou Meng,the author thus chooses the 204 kinds of food in the novel as the subjects to compare the similarities and differences and the advantages and demerits between Yang's and Hawkes' translation strategies.Based on previous studies on cuisine culture translation in Hong Lou Meng,the author classifies the 204 kinds of food into staple food,snack food,dish,beverage,and fruit and tonic food.Meanwhile,with the help of Chinese-English Parallel Corpus of A Dream of Red Mansions built by Shaoxing University,cultural schema theory and the strategies or three matching patterns(A-A,A-B and A-Zero matching pattern)proposed by Liu Mingdong to achieve the translatability of cultural schema,the author aims to study the adoption of three matching patterns in two versions.Through quantitative statistics and qualitative analysis,the study's significance lies in the applicability of cultural schema theory into cuisine culture translation and summarizing the rules of food names translation,so as to provide reference for cuisine culture translation in other classics and assistance for future translation teaching and practice.Through comparative and contrastive study,the author draws the following conclusions: firstly,the proportion of three matching patterns in Yang's version from high to low is A-Zero matching pattern,A-A matching pattern and A-B matching pattern;the proportion of three matching patterns in Hawkes' version from high to low is A-A matching pattern,A-Zero matching pattern and A-B matching pattern,thus verifying that as to other words translation concerning cuisine culture apart from the correspondence of cultural schemata,both versions tend to create new schemata in target language arousing target readers' interest,which is conflict with previous estimates of major translation strategy on Yang's foreignization and Hawkes' domestication.Besides,there exists a kind of one-to-one correspondence relationship between three categories of cultural schemata(correspondence,conflict and vacancy of cultural schemata)and three matching patterns(A-A,A-B and A-Zero matching pattern);each kind of schema classification determines the choice of translation strategy respectively.Lastly,three matching patterns belong to translation strategy but specific translation methods are different in two versions.A-A matching pattern includes literal translation;A-B matching pattern contains loan translation and substitution;A-Zero matching pattern covers direct translation to directly innovate new schema,transliteration,transliteration with annotation,transplanting and so on.