A Study of English Translation
of Culture-loaded Words from the Perspective of Cultural
Schema Theory — Taking Selected Modern Chinese Essays as an
Example
LI Siyi¹, LI Lijun²
¹Postgraduate, Foreign Languages
School, North China Electric Power University, Beijing,
China Email: lisy4141@163.com ²Associate Professor, Foreign
Languages School, North China Electric Power University,
Beijing, China.
ABSTRACT
Culture-loaded words are words that carry rich
cultural connotations in a specific culture. Due to the differences
between Chinese and Western cultural backgrounds, people from
different cultures often perceive such words differently, making
them obstacles in cross-cultural communication and translation.
Therefore, the study of culture-loaded words is essential. The
cultural schema theory provides a feasible perspective for
translating culture-loaded words: based on cultural schemata,
translators could decode culture-loaded words in source language,
then restructure and transform them to construct intelligible
cultural schemata for target language readers. Prose works contain
numerous culture-loaded words. This study focuses on Zhang Peiji’s
Selected Modern Chinese Essays, applying cultural schema theory to
analyze translation methods for culture-loaded words in prose. The
study finds that: when the cultural schemata of source-language and
target-language readers correspond, translators often use literal
translation and idiomatic translation methods to activate the
cultural schemata of the target language readers; cultural schemata
conflicts are mostly manifested in religious culture-loaded words,
where paraphrase method of free translation is usually used to
explain their special cultural connotations; when cultural schemata
default, translators either use free translation or retain the
original cultural schemata and adopt the transliteration method to
transplant the unique cultural schemata into the target language,
thus maintaining Chinese cultural characteristics.
Keywords: culture schema, culture-loaded words, Selected Modern
Chinese Essay, Zhang Peiji.
