Cultural translation in the context of Lotman’s cultural semiotics: a case study of the German translation of Six Records of a Floating Life

Abstract

Six Records of a Floating Life is a collection of autobiographical essays written by Shen Fu, a scholar in the Qing Dynasty. Its writing is ancient and elegant, and it is rich and profound in connotation. The German translation of Six Records of a Floating Life by German sinologist Rainer Schwarz presents the spirit of the original in detail and is of high cultural value and research significance. Based on Lotman’s theory of cultural semiotics, this paper examines the interpretive value of Lotman’s view of “text” for translation research in three dimensions: information transmission, information generation, and information memory, with a view to elucidating the cultural value of the German translation of Six Records of a Floating Life, innovating the theoretical integration of cultural semiotics and translation research, and expanding the application of semiotic theory in the field of cultural translation.