On Miscomprehension In Literary Translation: A Psychological Perspective

Miscomprehension is a common phenomenon in translation. It is more liable to happen in literary translation for the characteristics of literary texts. It mainly stems from the distance between the writer and the reader because when a text is finished, there is a distance between the author and the reader. "The writer does not respond to the reader. Rather, the book divides the act of writing and the act of reading into two sides, between which there is no communication. The reader is absent for the act of writing; the writer is absent for the act of reading. ( 2001:398)" In such a situation, it is entirely up to the translator to activate all his ability and knowledge to interpret and finally attain comprehension of the text. During this process, obstacles, explicit or implicit, will often lead to miscomprehension.However, traditional translation theories usually focus their attention on the translation products or presume translators as ideal. These theories ignore the fact that the translator, as a man with consciousness, has to be controlled by his mind; that therefore he is to be controlled by some psychological faculties in the translating process. The target of this research is turned from the translation product to the translator himself by employing psychology, a subject studying the activities of subjects. By adopting the perspective of "miscomprehension", this paper intends to explore how psychological factors interfere with the translator's comprehension of the source text, finally leading to miscomprehension in literary translation. Therefore, study on this topic is of unusual significance.The thesis consists of three chapters in addition to an introduction and a conclusion. The introduction begins with a general idea of miscomprehension, then goes on to differentiate mistranslation andmiscomprehension, and miscomprehension discussed in a hermeneutic perspective and that in a psychological perspective. The significance of this research is also presented.Chapter One introduces some influential models of the translation process, and analyzes their merits and demerits respectively. This acts not only as an argument that comprehension is the basis for translation, but also points ahead to the perspective of our discussion. We will discuss not only the linguistic cognition but also the aesthetic cognition of the text with theoretical support from cognitive psychology.Chapter Two provides the theoretical foundation of this thesis. In the light of cognitive psychology, this chapter employs the core working concepts such as "sensation", "perception", "gestalt perception", "schema", "thinking", "imagination" and "inference" to discuss the faculties and operations underlying the comprehension process.Chapter Three explores how miscomprehension in literary translation takes place. Based on the discussion of Chapter Two and with illustrative examples, the chapter expounds miscomprehension in different operation stage such as sensation, perception, thinking and synthesis, in which set and the influence of minimax principle are the main reasons for miscomprehension.In Conclusion the writer points out that miscomprehension occurs not only for psychological reasons, but is also caused by objective factors. Some of these factors concern the method of foreign language acquisition, which show that special training for would-be translators are necessary. Moreover, Some strategies are put forward to help reduce the possibility of miscomprehension in literary translation.