A Chinese-English Translation Report On The Meandering Jinjiang River:The History Of The Bashu Culture (Excerpt) Guided By Cultural Schema Theory

The report is based on the translation of The Meandering Jinjiang River: The History of the Bashu Culture(selected parts of Chapter 6 and Chapter 7).The book is written by Duan Yu and Tan Luofei,and mainly introduces the historical changes in the Bashu region from the prehistoric era to the Qing Dynasty.It involves a wide range of knowledge,including Neo-Confucianism,history,art,science and technology,religion,politics,etc.The translation part that the translator has taken responsibility for is from Section 6 in Chapter Six to Part 1 of Section 1 in Chapter Seven,which mainly discusses the development of Neo-Confucianism,historiography,art,science and technology,and religion in the Bashu region during the Song Dynasty,as well as the political changes in the Bashu region during the Ming and Qing Dynasties.The original text has a large number of long and complicated sentences,including culture-loaded words involving a wide range of knowledge.In the cultural schema theory,a correct reconstruction of the cultural schema of the source language can help readers understand the meaning of the original text more accurately.Therefore,in order to restore the cultural schema of the original text more accurately in the translation,the translator selects Liu Mingdong’s cultural schema theory to help the translator understand and decode the cultural schema of the original text in order to express the original cultural schema and reconstruct the targeted cultural schema.Based on the theory,the translator adopts translation methods to deal with three cultural schemas: cultural schema correspondence,cultural schema conflict,and cultural schema default in the translation of culture-loaded words.Furthermore,the translator has not only considered the acceptability of the target language but also retained the original style when translating the culture-loaded words in this book.During translation,the translator adopts translation methods such as transliteration,substitution,ellipsis,and so on in an attempt to help the TL readers understand and create new cultural schemas so as to spread Chinese culture,make a little contribution to the policy of “going global”,and meanwhile enhance China’s cultural image among international readers.