Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research background
It is widely acknowledged that the development of globalization, especially cultural globalization, has led to an obvious tendency in translation studies, namely, translators begin to lay emphasis on cultural transformation. Being a kind of communication between languages, translation is not only regarded as transfer between languages, but thought as transfer and transplanting process of cultures. Therefore, the function of cultural translation is increasingly necessary, on which the society has highlighted great demand.
Nowadays, more and more foreigners are fascinated by Chinese profound culture, like cuisine culture. Besides, in recent years, fast-paced lifestyle and improper diet have caused the appearance of various diseases, which leads people to realize the importance of keeping in good health through proper diet. At present, people begin to know about food therapy and believe that food therapy is better than medical therapy. Hong Lou Meng is a typical example in cuisine culture, to which more and more attention has been paid. According to incomplete statistics, there exist more than 200 foods in Hong Lou Meng, which will be elaborated in chapter three. The author of the thesis tries to make comparisons between Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang’s (hereinafter referred to Yang’s) version, A Dream of Red Mansions and David Hawkes and John Minford’s (hereinafter abbreviated as Hawkes’) version, The Story of the Stone, so the author adopts transliteration of the novel name, Hong Lou Meng, in order to ensure objectivity.
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1.2 Research objectives and significance
In the present study, the author combines quantitative statistics and qualitative analysis, assisted with cultural schema theory and Parallel Corpus of A Dream of Red Mansions built by Shaoxing University (2010). From the perspective of cultural schema theory, especially, the realization method of cultural schemata translatability proposed by Liu Mingdong (2003), few studies have been conducted in cuisine culture translation in Hong Lou Meng. Meanwhile, there are some corpus-based translation studies on idioms, euphemism and translation universals and so on in Hong Lou Meng, except cuisine culture translation.
Therefore, firstly, the author aims to verify the embodiment of realization method proposed by Liu Mingdong, namely, A-A, A-B and A-Zero matching pattern, in Yang’s and Hawkes’ versions. Furthermore, in view of the parallel corpus, the author calculates individual proportions of three matching patterns in above two English versions. Secondly, on account of quantitative statistics and qualitative analysis, the author intends to study Yang’s and Hawkes’ translation emphasis or style in food names translation. Thirdly, the author attempts to demonstrate the correspondence relationship between three matching patterns and three categories of cultural schemata.
The significance of present study lies in realistic and practical significance. Along with frequent international cultural communication, the translation of culture elements has been attached great importance to. Thus, there is a reality, namely, how to translate cultural elements with what kinds of translation theories. If cultural elements are not properly dealt with, cultural misunderstanding will be caused hindering normal cultural communication. Thus, this study, to some extent, could confirm the feasibility of three matching patterns providing a new angle for cultural translation. Besides, there is a proverb that “Food is the first necessity of the people” in China; cuisine culture in Hong Lou Meng, the research subjects, is typical Chinese culture. Therefore, the study finally could verify that cultural schema theory exerts instructive significance on cultural translation.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Schema theory
2.1.1 Concepts of schema
The word “schema” derives from the Greek, which has the meaning, “shape”, or more generally, “plan” and can be found in many philosophical works. In English, both schemas and schemata are used as plural forms. Due to the influence of artificial intelligence, the development of schema theory in the western world could be divided into two periods: early schema theory and modern schema theory.
It is generally acknowledged that the schema theories before 1970s belong to early schema theory. In 1781, German philosopher Immanuel Kant proposed the concept of “schema” for the first time. From the perspective of philosophy, Kant stated the relationship between the old and new knowledge and argued that it is meaningful when the new established knowledge, concepts and ideas could be combined with pre-existing knowledge in his or her mind. From the perspective of Gestalt psychology, the theory emphasized that mental organization has the inherent tendency toward coherent organization, which is a spontaneous process that would happen without being stimulated. Meanwhile, the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies. The fundamental knowledge based on the above mental process is “schema” stored in human mind. Based on this view, a new experience is understood by the comparison with a stereotypical version of a similar experience held in memory. In 1932, British psychologist Sir Frederic Bartlett defined “schema” in his work Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology as “an active organization of past reactions or of past experiences, which must always be supposed to be operating in any well-adapted organic response (Bartlett, 1932).” Based on story recall experiments, Bartlett shows the guidance’s role of schema and demonstrates that remembering is not a process of rote or mechanically reproductive process but rather a process in which human beings grasp the overall gist of an event and then reconstruct the details from this overall impression. He suggests that memory takes the form of schema which offers a mental framework for understanding and remembering new information. Then, the popularity of behaviorism in psychology leads to the interruption of schema research.
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2.2 Cultural schema theory
Basically speaking, cultural schema is an important part of content schema or context schema and refers to all the knowledge concerning culture. And cultural schema could be called as “cultural context”, which is essential for the final correct comprehension. Rumelhart (1980) claimed that “cultural schema theory presents a cognitive approach to the question of how cultural knowledge is represented and how their representation facilitates the use of knowledge.” In this part, the author tries to show the definition and classification of cultural schema and its national cultural imprint.
2.2.1 Concepts of cultural schema
At abroad, Rumelhart (1980) was convinced that cultural schema belongs to content schema, including cultural knowledge, so people could understand and appreciate other countries from the perspective of cultural schema. And cultural schema is a sub-schema of content schema. Rumelhart argued that cultural schema refers to “knowledge structure blocks” of culture in people’s mind, which can be activated to perceive and comprehend all kinds of cultural phenomena. Similarly, George Yule (1996) defined cultural schemata as “pre-existing knowledge structures based on experience in a particular culture”. In this way, cultural schema refers to a kind of knowledge organization model of culture based on pre-existing experience in the mind, which can be evoked to perceive and apprehend various cultural phenomena in the society. Then, Nishida (1999) further proposed that experiences are the motive force for creating cultural schemata. Bedir (1992) claimed that cultural schemata are “the background knowledge about cultural aspects of language being learned…” Furthermore, anthropologist Gary Palmer (1996) hypothesized that cultural schemata are the products of social structures, salient rituals and a host of other cultural phenomena. Consequently, different nations have their own values on which one is good. The same thing may activate different cultural schemata. All in all, cultural schemata are conceptual structures which enable an individual to store perceptual and conceptual information about his or her culture and make interpretations of cultural experiences and expressions.
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Chapter Three Research Methodology .............................. 23
3.1 Research questions and hypotheses ........................ 23
3.2 Data collection ........................ 24
Chapter Four Research Results and Discussion ............................ 32
4.1 Results ......................................... 32
4.1.1 Descriptive statistics for A-A matching pattern ............................ 35
4.1.2 Descriptive statistics for A-B matching pattern ........................... 36
Chapter Five Conclusion ............................ 68
Chapter Four Research Results and Discussion
4.1 Results
In view of the translations collected from Parallel Corpus of A Dream of Red Mansions and calculations, results are shown in the following tables respectively. Table 4.1 presents the numbers and percentages of A-A, A-B and A-Zero matching patterns employed by Yang Xianyi and Hawkes in their translations of all food names in Hong Lou Meng while the other six tables demonstrate the numbers and percentages of A-A, A-B and A-Zero matching patterns in six classifications of food one by one. Due to edition difference or other reasons, there exists omission, that is, “家腊羊” is not translated in Yang’s version and “风腌果子狸”, “鸭信” and “杏仁茶” are not translated in Hawkes’ version, which are not taken into account in descriptive statistics.
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Chapter Five Conclusion
It is well-known that language and culture are closely related; language is the carrier of culture and mirror of every aspect of culture, therefore, translation activity is not only the translation of two languages but the translation of two cultures. Eugene Nida once claimed that in order to achieve successful translation, biculturalism is much more important than bilingualism, because vocabularies have meanings in terms of culture. Likewise, from the perspective of cultural schemata theory and in order to achieve successful translation, it is indispensable and necessary for translators to store as much as possible cultural schemata or the translation would cause misunderstanding in international communication.
Because of corpus-based translation studies, comparative and contrastive studies and descriptive translation studies, the present thesis intends to conduct a both quantitative and qualitative study on the application of cultural schema theory in translation of cuisine culture in two famous versions of Hong Lou Meng, A Dream of Red Mansions and The Story of the Stone. With the aid from translation strategy, three matching patterns put forward by Professor Liu Mingdong (2003) to achieve the translatability of cultural schemata and based on research questions raised in chapter three, the author comes to the following major findings.
First and foremost, it may be confirmed that three matching patterns proposed to achieve the translatability of cultural schemata could be embodied in Yang’s and Hawkes’ versions and the author has made an elaborative discussion on typical examples. From Table 4.1, apart from the omission in translation, as regards Yang’s version, the proportions from high share to low share are as follows: A-Zero matching pattern>A-A matching pattern>A-B matching pattern, with the proportion of 37.75%, 34.80% and 26.96% respectively; in Hawkes’ version, the proportions from high share to low share are as follows: A-A matching pattern>A-Zero matching pattern>A-B matching pattern with the proportion of 37.26%, 34.80% and 26.47% respectively. Due to the conventional correspondence in fruit and ingredients of dishes, A-A matching pattern accounts for a relatively large proportion.
reference(omitted)