A Study Of The Translation Strategies Of Chinese Culture-specific Items From The Perspective Of Cultural Schema

Translation activity, an important research in which human beings have beenengaged for a long time, bridges between two different languages or nations. Lexicaltranslation is a major part of translation, which offers a solid foundation for successfultranslation. Chinese culture is long-standing and mysterious with unique orientalcharm. Due to thousands of years of cultural accumulation, characteristics of Chineseculture are embodied in Chinese Culture-specific Items. The translation of ChineseCulture-specific Items is of great significance to the transmission of Chinese culture.So the proper translation strategies will guide the translation process of ChineseCulture-specific Items.The thesis aims at summarizing the strategies applied in the translation ofChinese Culture-specific Items, via an analysis of the influences of cultural schema inthe translation of Chinese Culture-specific Items. The author makes a study on theitems of high frequency collected from Chinese and foreign news reports anddiscusses three main underlying factors that affect the translation of ChineseCulture-specific Items, such as readership, text function and ideology. The resultsshow that cultural schema has an explanatory power to the translation of ChineseCulture-specific Items, from multiple angles. Through the research, the author findsout three phenomena in the translation of Chinese Culture-specific Items, which arecultural schema equivalence, cultural schema adjustment and cultural schema default.Accordingly the thesis sums up three translation strategies: A-A correspondence strategy, A-B correspondence strategy and A-Zero correspondence strategy. Followingeach strategy, the author concludes several translation methods, such as literaltranslation, loan translation, substitution, transliteration, transliteration withannotation, and paraphrasing. What is more, the author argues that translators need tomaster both bilingual language ability and cross-cultural consciousness so as toshoulder the responsibility for spreading Chinese culture into the world.