A Model Of Translation Process Based On "Frame Theory

As we are at the stage of "communication" in the history of translation research, parties involved in the communication and the media in which the communication is achieved are two key elements to study. Therefore, the cognitive approach should be adopted besides the knowledge approach i.e. to identify what a competent translator needs to know. The second approach can be further divided into process-oriented and linguistics, culture-oriented studies. As the linguistic study has been mature to some extent, what left are to explore translation process and translator's mind when translating across cultures.This paper first analyzes several existing models of translation from the angle of culture-translation relationship. Then a culture-bound model of translation process is established on the basis of Nida's model of information exchange process and Nord's four suppositions. Immediately after that, the concept of "frame" in psychology is introduced to analyze the cognitive process, and the relationship between "frame" and culture is found out to improve the above-mentioned model.From the perspective of message exchange, translation is regarded as the combination of decoding and encoding. Yet the complicated translation process is not a simple plus of the two steps. The message sender's intention, the target receiver's expectation and the translator's interpretation of the two should be taken into consideration. What operates the translator to match the intention and the expectation subconsciously is the "transfer mechanism" within his mind, which is actually the culture-bound frames ?the organizational principles governing events. Frame is innate and comparatively stable. It is the frame at different levels that makes the translator form his interpretation of the sender's intention and the target receiver's expectation and produce the translated version of the original message.By recognizing the status of frame in translation process and establishing a frame-based model, we can raise the activities at subconscious level to conscious level and thus help the translator to make decisions during translation process and facilitate the training of translators.