The concept of “meme” proposed by Chesterman (1997; 2000) describes the activity of
translation as the spreading of ideas towards other cultures by means of the addition of
new texts.
The memetic metamorphosis is the reflection of a mental process in which the
translator creates the interaction of the cognitive schemes of the target culture with those
of the source culture. The overlapping of schemes is also ruled by the mental
representation of a “cognitive scheme of cooperation between actors” (cf. Risku 1998: 52)
established by the translator. This scheme of cooperation is based on certain norms of
meaning negotiation and, therefore, conditions the translators mental representation of
the “projected source text” (cf. Hönig 1997: 51). Negotiation of meaning in translation
can exist – micro- and macro-strategically – at different textual levels, and this
negotiation of meaning that exists in the cultural overlapping of cognitive schemes
enables intercultural communication. The idea of “scheme” proposed in the present
paper, in relation to “translational norms” (Toury 1995) and “memes” (Chesterman
1997), is partially based on Eco’s cognitive semantics (1999) and it serves as a useful
theoretical construct for negotiating meaning in translation teaching. We will further
describe how texts change when they are translated by means of an example to show the
effectiveness of this theory.
