Cognitive Construal In Literary Translation

In recent years,the booming of cognitive translatology has gradually instigated a shift of focus on translating process from texts.Translation is no longer conceived as merely code switching between languages,but cognitive processing involving multiple cognitive resources.Specifically,translation process is a bidirectional interaction between the source author’s and the translator’s cognitions,whereby translator’s cognition acts as an intermediate between the source text and the translation.Such a cognitive interaction is mainly manifested in the equivalent understanding between the source author and the translator,that is,the translator takes various dimensions of construal into consideration and attempts to restore the source author’s construal of specific scenes and plots as far as possible.Many previous studies have applied the notion of construal to translation studies,and put forward many important concepts such as subjective equivalence,construal equivalence,prototype equivalence and frame equivalence.However,they failed to reach a consensus on how many dimensions of construal should be included and which dimensions are invoked in translating.In addition,construal dimensions are only simply defined and a more fine-grained description of its sub-dimensions remains to be reached.In other words,it is imperative to delve into the specification of construal dimensions.Langacker(2019)offered a new demarcation of construal and put forward five dimensions: perspective,selection,salience,dynamicity and imagination,with each dimension elaborated with several sub-dimensions.These dimensions and sub-dimensions form an organic combination,and jointly affect and constrain dynamic meaning construction.Based on Langacker’s(2019)new definition of construal,this study explores cognitive construal operation in literary translation and attempts to answer the following questions:(1)What dimensions and sub-dimensions are invoked in literary translation as a process of cognitive construal?(2)How does cognitive construal operate in literary translation?(3)What are the factors influencing cognitive construal operations in literary translation?This study takes Macbeth,one of Shakespeare’s four great tragedies,as an example,and collects five important Chinese translations of the play for contrastive study.The conclusions are as follows:Firstly,translation or translating is a cognitive construal process,and literary translation as a cognitive construal process involves five dimensions of construal,i.e.,perspective,selection,prominence,dynamicity and imagination proposed by Langacker(2019)but manifests its idiosyncrasies in sub-dimensions of these dimensions.Secondly,translators operate on cognitive construal in literary translation through the above-mentioned five dimensions,which is fully specified as follows:Perspective refers to the tempo-spatial dimension and the stance and attitude people held when they observe things and events.It involves four sub-dimensions including subject and object,on-stage and off-stage,viewing arrangement and reference point.In literary translation,translators operate on cognitive construal by adjusting their conceived subject-object relation,figure-ground distribution,viewing arrangement and reference point based on their own tempo-spatial location and stance on and attitude towards the source author,source text,the translation,and the target language readers,etc.The analysis of perspective is helpful to reduce the influence of the translators’ prejudices and stereotypes in the process of translation,so that the translator can achieve the equivalence of construal to the source text to the maximum extent.Selection allows people to observe and describe a thing or scene from different aspects.It involves two sub-dimensions including specificity and profile-base relation.In literary translation,translators manipulate their selection on the basis of the selection of the source author’s observation and description of certain scene or concepts so that information encoded in the source text can be maintained to the maximum in the target language.Translators’ manipulation of selection can be achieved through adjustment of specificity,metaphor and metonymy,which is mainly embodied in the level of vocabulary and sentence.The operation of selection is closely related to intersubjectivity.In other words,translation is the process of coordinating interaction among the source author,translator and reader in the interactive network.Prominence refers to the focus of attention.In literary translation,translators prioritize certain contents according to their own construal to attract target language readers’ attentions.Different translators may hold different perceptions towards the same entity or event,which makes it possible that different translators may produce different versions of the same text.Different choices of profile-base relation and trajectory-landmark relation indicate variations of translators’ cognitive construal which further demonstrate translators’ attitudes towards the characters in the source text.Dynamicity is mainly reflected in the way of mental scanning of an event,i.e.,a way of constructing a scene that the speaker uses in order to describe a specific event.Temporally,mental scanning can be divided into sequential scanning and summary scanning.Spatially,mental scanning can be divided into “center-edge”,“up-down”,“left-right”,“far-near”,“big-small” and other scanning in different directions.In literary translation,translators manipulate dynamicity in the translation based on dynamicity exhibited in the source text to ensure the accuracy and totality of information in translation.Comparison between different translations sheds light upon different dynamic operations taken by different translators in the translation process,thereby revealing the differences in their construal methods.Imagination refers to the cognitive imagination that the translator exerts in the process of understanding the text.It involves four basic mental abilities: extensionality,integration,disengagement,and abstraction.Extension ability in translation includes abstract extension and concrete extension;integration ability mainly includes simple integration,mirror integration,single-scope integration and double-scope integration;disengagement is the contextual separation and original intention restoration for the personification of inanimate objects or for construal of virtual motion;abstraction is to retain the characteristics of specific aspects of concept and interpret it schematically.These four basic mental abilities interact with each other,and influence and restrict the translators’ interpretation of the text.Thirdly,in literary translation,cognitive construal operation is realized through translators’ manipulation of perspective,selection,prominence,dynamicity and imagination and its relevant sub-dimensions.Cognitive construal operation in translation is constrained by translators’ sociocultural background,their intention and interest,their thinking patterns,the language and rhetoric of the target language,genre of the translation,etc.Its ultimate goal is to accurately and fully reproduce the information encoded in the source text,and its result is to reach either equivalence or shift of construal.This dissertation holds that translation is not only a simple “decoding to re-encoding” process between languages,but also the result of translators’ cognition,which serves as the intermediate between the source text and the target.Cognitive construal is the core element of translators’ cognition,and it affects and restricts the quality of translation.However,a complete equivalence of cognitive construal between the source author and the translator is only an ideal state and can rarely be achieved.The goal of translators is to optimize their construals through construal operation.By examining literary translation from the perspective of cognitive construal,this dissertation has clarified translatory criteria in light of five dimensions and relevant sub-dimensions of cognitive construal,and demonstrated the significance and value of construal theory to literary translation.Therefore,it promotes cognitive translatology and enlightens further literary translation studies as well.