Chapter 1 Introduction
Henan, the most populated province in China, is a big agricultural and cultural province. As weall know, China boasts of its over 5000 years of civilization history and profound cultural desposition.During these time, China’s political, economic, military, cultural and population center has remained in themiddle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. Henan is located in this area, which is particularly rich inhistory and culture. Among the eight ancient capitals of China, Henan accounts for four, as they areKaifeng, Luoyang, Anyang, Zhengzhou. Henan has embarked on the route of cultural tourism since thepolicy of reform and opening was adopted, and has brought large numbers of foreign tourists especially inthese years after China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. Many experts believe that tourism is akind of cultural carrier, and culture is the soul of tourism. But does the Chinese to English translation of thescenic has any readability or how many places can attract foreign tourists?Schema theory occupies a large component in readability. What is the schema? The schema is thestorage unit of a wide range of knowledge in the human brain. The manifestations of the schema is just likethe tree structure, around the trunk often spawn many small branches, and then around the small branchesform even smaller ones, so a step-by-step decomposition comes.
Schema is a cognitive foundation in that people dealing with all of outside information need to use thebrain schema. The schema first appeared in the writings of the German sociologist Immanuel Kant (Kant,1781). Germany modern psychologists Bartlett (Burtlrtt, 1923) applicated and developed the schematicconcept which based on the schema to explain, forecast, organize, and absorb information. In 1970s, theUnited States artificial intelligence experts Rumelbart pointed out that "schema theory is basically a kind ofknowledge about the person, that is to say, how knowledge is characterized, and how the characterization ofthis knowledge is to be used in a special way which is conducive to the application of the theory ofknowledge. This theory emphasizes that person’s already acquired knowledge and the results of theknowledge play a decisive role in the cognitive activity. Schema theory holds that any language materials,whether oral or written, by itself has no meaning, only guiding the listener or reader based on their priorknowledge to recover or constitute a meaning, for instance: institution, company, culture. According to thistheory, that the reader understands and accepts a text message is a kind of active process of “guess--it is”,the first is to enter the certain information, and then constantly look for the schema which can explain theseinformation, when we found the right schema that we got the understanding. Clearly, the fact of a reader’sunderstanding a piece of text is the interaction between the schema of text material with informationprovided in the reader's mind. When the reader links together both of the above, he can get the meaning ofwhat the author transfers and get the purpose of interaction between the reader and the author. Thus scenicis introduced, by which they’ll be interested in how visitors could get the same information with the mindmassage just like profiles, settings, routes in these large introduction. But there is something more than justinformation in introduction.
……………
Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Brief introduction
Schema can not only help us to understanding the new information, but can also predict the remainingtext, to explain the structure of knowledge. At present, studies on tourism translation mostly use the westerntranslation theories, system function theory, relevance theory, skopos theory, polysystem theory,information theory, and the theory of cross-cultural translation. But, there are less research from theperspective of cognitive translation. Considering the importance of tourism translation in tourismdevelopment, this paper attempts to use the schema theory to explore the tourism translation. from itsdefinition, features, categorizations and the related research in China and abroad. In the Piaget’s cognitive development theory, schema refers to an organization, repeatable behaviorpatterns or psychological structure. It is a kind of cognitive structure of the unit. A person is a wholepattern to form a cognitive structure of man.Schema, originally proposed by Kant, occupies an important position in Kant's Cognitive theory，whoput the schema as a kind of technology, a skill of "hidden in the depths of the human heart". Therefore, inKant’s theory, the schema is the prior category. The modern famous Swiss psychologist Piaget, through theexperimental research, defines a new meaning of schema which has become the core concept of his theoryof cognitive development. Schema, as intermediaries, includes the action structure and operation structurefrom experience to the concept of action; schema is main body internal a dynamic and variable cognitivestructure. He opposed to behaviorism of S - R formula, and proposed the formula of S → (AT) → R thatcertain stimuli (S) is the inpidual assimilation (A) into the cognitive structure (T), in order to make thereaction (R). Inpidual can make this or that kind of reaction by various stimuli because the inpidual hasthe schema ability to assimilate these stimuli.
……………
2.2 Previous study on application of schema theory
The theory has been applied and researched in many fields,such as the English reading, listening, cloze, and translation. About Critique of Pure Reason, Kant’s studiesfirstly give the definition of schema, and then expound the philosophical meaning of schema. He proposedthat schema is the connection between concept and the external objects in human’s mind (ZhaoYanfang,2001). Then Frderic C Bartlett (1932)wrote a book Remembering:A Study in Experimental andSocial Psychology. He is he first person to introduce the schema into psychology and education. For thefirst time in 1932, he applied the concept of the schema to the memory experiment , which became thefoundation for schema theory. He concluded that schema was an organization of former experiences andresponses (Zhao Lihua,2008). The term schema was used by Jean Piaget in 1926,so it was not an entirelynew concept. Anderson, however, expanded the meaning. Not until 1970, researchers in ArtificialIntelligence arouse the revived interest in schema theory. One of the influential schema theories is putforward by Schank and Abelson (1977)in their book Script, Plans, Goals and Understanding. Later, anAmerican AI expert D.E Rumelhart(1980)in his book Schemata: the Building Blocks of Cognition furtherdeveloped schema theory. By now,the schema theory has been applied into many fields, such aspsychological therapy language teaching, discourse analysis and translation.
……………
Chapter 3 Case Studies of the Readability of English Versions..... 17
3.1 Theoretical Foundation...... 17
3.1.1 View of schema theory ..... 17
3.1.2 Three kinds of schemata........ 18
3.1.3 The construction of schema........ 18
3.2 Analysis of linguistic in E-C introduction at scenic spots ........ 20
3.2.1 Analysis of lexis ..... 21
3.2.2 Analysis of Chinese ancient poetry usage ...... 28
3.3 Anlysis of Formal schema ...... 29
3.4 Different Schemata in Content .... 30
3.4.1 Tourism and Culture .... 30
3.4.2 The Chinese Specific Culture in Scenic Spots of Henan Province.... 32
3.4.3 Discourse construction of Scenic spot....... 33
3.5 The Negative Influence of Schema upon the Cognitive ..... 36
3.6 Summary ....... 37
Chapter Four Conclusion ........ 39
Chapter 3 Case Studies of the Readability of English Versions on Chinese Introduction at Scenic Spots in Henan Province
3.1 Theoretical Foundation
A schema (plural form: schemata) is a very important concept in cognitive psychology. Cognitivepsychologists use the schema theory to explain the psychological process. Deng Gang (2001) gives thesystematic explanation about schema theory, claiming that schema memory is a memory structure in ourmind, including the language knowledge, social cultural knowledge and other knowledge, and also containsthe already-formed neural response theory. The most important view on schema theory is that when peopleunderstand new things, they need to link the new things with the already known concepts and the pastexperiences, namely background knowledge. The understanding and interpretation of the new thingsdepend on the already existing schema in the mind, so the input information must be consistent with theseschemata. For example, a hospital. When we mention or define the abstract word in our mind, we will thinkof the things we encounter and what we do in the hospital. This is a common theory and so much theoryhelp us understand something abstract.
……………
Conclusion
This chapter first works out a overall conclusion of the ideas in the whole thesis with a little extendeddiscussion, then makes possible contributions of this thesis to the Readability of English Versions onChinese Introduction at Scenic Spots in Henna Province, and gives some suggestion for the translator whowants to arouse the tourist’s schema theory about the scenic spot.Schemata plays an important role in understanding and expressing information. The translation is aprocess from understanding to expressing, and the source language and target language is also a processlike this. The corresponding, missing as well as differentiating with form schema, content schema andlinguistic schema between the source language and target language directly influences the effect oftranslation. In the process of understanding and expressing information, the translator should use themethod of literal translation, transliteration, paraphrase, deletion, and sentence translation skills to activateand enrich the target language schema which has already existed in the reader's mind, and help the touriststo establish new schemata, in order to achieve the purpose of the transferring and exchanging ofinformation.
……………
Reference (omitted)