Application Of Blended Space Theory To The Reconstruction Of Cognitive Connections In Translation

With the rapid development of translator-oriented approach and cognitive science, more and more translation researchers dedicate themselves to the exploration of translation process. Translation process is not only a transformational process between two languages but also a cognitive process in nature. The springing up of descriptive translation and the popularity of culture-oriented study foregrounds the cultural identities and subjective roles of translators in the translation process. Therefore, translator's subjectivities have become necessary and important research subjects for translation researchers.Owing to universal connections among objective reality, people have cognizance of an object not only through the recognition of its own distinguished characters but also through its connections with other objects. This kind of connections among objective reality reflected in human brains is called cognitive connections. Cognitive linguists believe that linguistic competence is one part of cognitive competence and language useitself is a manifestation of cognitive competence. Thus cognitive connections are reflected in languages people use.Since the main aim of translation is in quest of optimum equivalence between source language and target language and languages are regarded as the tools to understand the objective world, translators should take the reproduction of objective world into the consideration when seeking for translation equivalence (Shun Ya, 2001:9). The transformation of the objective world includes not only the shift of language meaning but also the shift of cognitive connections. Translation equivalence, therefore, is established on the reconstruction of the cognitive connections among things in the objective world. In translation process, translators transfer source language meaning to target language readers by seeking the same conceptual expression and the reconstruction of the cognitive connections in source language text and hence, inspire the same psychological response in the target language readers as that in the translator.Early in 1961, Halliday called for the setting up of a linguistic model for the translation process. In the 1990s, the famous cognitive linguists G. Fauconnier and J. Turner originated blended space theory in which conceptual integration is taken as a pervasive cognitive process in the meaning construction of natural languages; accordingly, the theory can contribute to the analysis and interpretation of translation process. Integration networks involve input spaces, generic spaces, and blended spaces. There is a cross-space mapping of counterpart connections between input spaces and selective projection of structure from the inputs to the blended space. The blended space develops an emergent structure through composition, completion, and elaboration.The thesis intends to establish a cognitive model for the representation of translator's cognitive psychological process of meaning transference in translation process within the framework of blended space theory. The blended space theory, based on the cognitive science, sheds light on the explanation of translation process from cognitive perspective: source language text space, including concepts and their cognitive connections, and translator space, including expressions in target language and their cognitive connections, project selectively to the blended space—target language text space. "Neither the presentation form of target language text nor the translation process...