Schema Defaults And Compensation Strategies In Translation

According to the cognitive linguistics, translation is virtually the translation of schema that is a process of schema transformation from the source language to the target language. As to the translator, the difficulty of schema translation lies in the activation of the default schema. Therefore, the treatment of the activation, whether it is good or bad, will have a direct impact on the final translation text. Under the overall framework of schema theory, this thesis presents three kinds of schema defaults: linguistic default, content default and cultural default.Through a contrastive study on the three English versions of Xi You Ji which were done at three different historical periods, the thesis presents a summarized five kinds of effective compensation strategies in regard to the three kinds of schema defaults, and a discussion of the application details of these compensation strategies in the three English versions with sufficient analyses of examples. This study indicates that literal translation, transliteration, literal translation with note, transliteration with note, and literal translation with contextual explanation are effective ways to compensate schema defaults, for literal translation and transliteration can retain the linguistic features of the source language and the added note and contextual explanation can help the target readers to form the corresponding schema in their reading of the target text.