The Translation Of Animal Images In The Book Of Poetry

Translation is the bridge of the communication between different cultures,aiming to spread the culture by the form of information exchanges.How to accurately re-express the culture in the translation is the problem every translator has to solve.The cultural schema,as a branch of content schema under the Schema Theory,is the structure for processing cultural information in people's mind formed by the accumulation of their previous experiences.If activated,the cultural schema can help people understand the cultural phenomena taking place in the society.Cultural Schema Theory has been applied in many areas,among which second language acquisition and cross-cultural translation are two important fields.The Book of Poetry is the first collection of poems in China.The lively content and the varied techniques of expression in The Book of Poetry have a profound influence on the creating and expressing of the later literary works,making it a very significant work in the history of Chinese literature.There are many images adopted in The Book of Poetry such as animals,plants,people,houses,tools,utensils for sacrifice activities,etc.to record and reveal so many aspects of the society and thoughts of ancient Chinese by describing vividly the scenes of their daily life.In the history of China appeared countless researches on The Book of Poetry.There are also some studies on its translation in modern times.However,there are few explorations from the perspective of the re-expressions of cultural schemata in The Book of Poetry and their effects.This thesis adopted the animal images in The Book of Poetry as the objects.The author chose the non-metrical translation of James Legge in 1871 and the metrical version of Wang Rongpei collected in Library of Chinese Classics in 2008 for analysis from the perspective of Cultural Schema Theory.The two are excellenttranslators at home and broad whose translations both occupied an important position in the area of The Book of Poetry translation and are prevailing in the market.Therefore,their translations are very meaningful for studying.This thesis adopted both quantitative and qualitative study methods,classified the animal images in The Book of Poetry according to the four cultural schemata relations between Chinese and western cultures: cultural schema similarity,cultural schema dislocation,cultural schema conflict and cultural schema vacancy.Then the author analyzed the translation methods for them and their translation effects of re-expressing the cultural schemata in the translations of Legge and Wang.According to the overall data the author compared the similarities and differences of the translation methods of the two translators and explored the reasons,concluded translation methods that may better contribute to a proper translation of the animal images in each cultural schemata relation according to the analysis on the effects of the translating methods the two translators adopted.Besides,based on the overall analysis process the thesis summarized the enlightenment that may help translator choose the methods when translating animal images in The Book of Poetry.