On The Classification And C-E Translation Of Culture-loaded Words From The Perspective Of Schema Theory

As is well-known, translation is a dynamic process, which relates to the source language and the target language. With the development of society, translation has become a crucial device of cross-cultural communication. Owning to this, more and more scholars have been shifting their attention from linguistic analysis to cultural factors. One of the examples is the study of effective translation of culture-loaded words. Culture-loaded words refer to the words or expressions with distinctive cultural colors. Language and culture are inseparable and can influence each other. Language is the carrier of culture and culture is the core of language. As different nations have different cultures, culture-loaded words are the very barrier of cross-cultural communication to some extent.Lots of scholars have contributed themselves to the research of culture-loaded words translation and many strategies have been proposed. Among them, domestication and foreignization are the most popular methods.Unlike the researchers who analyze cultural-loaded words form semantic respect, this thesis aims to find the basic differences between Chinese and western cultures, classify culture-loaded words in the guidance of schema theory and discuss the respective translating method for each kind of culture-loaded words in Lu Xun’s novels.A schema describes an organized pattern of thought or behavior. It can also be described as a mental structure of pre-conceived ideas, a framework representing some aspect of the world, or a system of organizing and perceiving new information. Bartlett, an English psychologist, firstly introduced the notion of schema as early as1932in order to explain why people reconstructed a story when recalling it so as to make more sense of it in terms of their own knowledge and experience. According to Bartlett, the story is assimilated to pre-stored schemata based on previous experience. Rumelhart (1980) defined a schema as "a data structure for representing the generic concepts stored in memory". In other words, schema is an organizing and orienting attitude that involves active organization of past experience. According to this, people under distinct cultural backgrounds have their own schemata, which are constituted by their social rules, customs, unique traditions and so on. It is the schema or cultural schema that forms the barrier between people’s cognition. Generally speaking, there are three kinds of schemata, i.e. overlapped schemata, vacant schemata and divergent schemata. Because of this people can not reach an agreement on the cognition of the world. It also prevents people from understanding the true meaning of culture-loaded words and reaching effective cross-cultural communication.This thesis is generally divided into five parts. Chapter one is the introduction of the thesis, which briefly introduces the significance, objectives of the study, definition of Chinese-loaded words and characteristics of Lu Xun’s novels. Chapter two is the theoretical framework of this thesis. It firstly reviews the current researches on the translation of Chinese culture-loaded words and then discusses the developmental history of schema theory. Chapter three is the core of the whole thesis. The author firstly makes analysis of the differences between Chinese and western cognitions under the influence of schemata. Next, the author pays attention to the classification of Chinese culture-loaded words in several novels of Lu Xun under this guidance. At last, the author tries to analyze the reasons from three aspects, i.e. geographical reason, religious reason, and social reason. Chapter four is mainly about the translating methods of Chinese culture-loaded words. In this chapter, the author makes a detailed analysis about each kind of culture-loaded words from several novels of Lu Xun, and puts forward effective strategies to translate them. Chapter five is the conclusion of the thesis.To sum up, this thesis aims to find an effective way of translating culture-loaded words from a new perspective by analyzing some typical examples from the English version of Lu Xun’s several novels. By doing this, the author hopes to be helpful to other translators and facilitate the cross-cultural communication between China and Western countries.