On C-E Poetic Image Translation From The Perspective Of Cognitive Category Transfer

The Chinese Classical Poetry enjoys great popularity worldwide, and its translation occupies significant status in the cultural communication. Poetry mainly consists of images, thus the translation of poetry can be regarded as the translation of images. As we have known, images are the carrier of the poet’s emotions and desires, which are not just linguistic signs, but also the outcome of human being’s cognition. In the meanwhile, category is the outcome of man’s categorization which is the basic ability of human’s cognition. On this aspect, the essence of poetry images corresponds to the nature of categories in cognitive linguistics, which inspires the writer to study poetic image translation from the perspective of cognitive category transfer linguistically.Category is one of fundamental concepts in the cognitive linguistics. Its research has gained much attention from scholars. The theory of it mainly goes through two stages, first is the definitional stage and the second prototypical stage. From Aristotle to Wittgenstein, the definitional category theory occupied an important position. The basic assumptions of it are as follows: categories are defined in terms of a set of necessary and sufficient conditions; categories have clear-cut boundaries; all members of a category have equal status.While in the 1970 s, the emergence and grown-up of cognitive linguistics put forward some questions towards the definitional theory, and the prototype theory of category was put forward. According to the latter, category is not a closed set of members, but an open one, in which members can increase and also decrease. Secondly, category members enjoy different status, consisting of typical and non-typical members, in other words, prototypes and non-prototypes. Thirdly, Category is a hierarchy structure, mainly consisting of three levels of category, which are the superordinate category, basic-level category and the subordinate category. Every image belongs to one of them linguistically. As a result, the author attempts to study image translation from the perspective of linguistic category transfer.According to the cognitive view, linguistic category is produced in the interaction between human beings and the outside world. Since Chinese and English are two different language systems, there is no doubt that in the process of C-E image translation non-correspondence of poetic images must take place. According to these non-correspondent situations, two category transferring models are adopted in order to achieve the best image translation. They are the in-category transferring model and the inter-category transferring model. When there are ways to preserve the original images, we should try our best to preserve them by adopting the former model; when it is necessary to change in categories, the latter one should be adopted. To put these into practice, there are some specific translating approaches.The first strategy is to retain the original image, and three means are discussed to achieve image retaining, which are equivalent translation, schematization and instantiation. The second strategy is to substitute the original image. For example, when the prototypes towards the same concept differ greatly, it is better to use this method in order not to bring out unnecessary misunderstanding or confusion. The third is to omit the original image. If kept in the translated version, the original images have no corresponding images and make no sense to target readers, it would be better to omit or generalize them. The fourth and last strategy is addition, which means adding specific images to the poetic lines. It constantly happens when the original image is an abstract one, and for the sake of good understanding, the translator can add a specific image while translating the poetic image. Retaining the original images is every translator’s desire, but based on specific situations, other translating strategies can be also employed. Though the form of images is to be changed, their aesthetic beauty and meanings can be better conveyed.To sum up, since the essence of poetic image corresponds with the nature of cognitive lexical category, it inspires the writer to study image from the linguistic point view. The thesis is an attempt to study the image translation from the perspective of category transfer linguistically. What are the essence of image and the nature of category? What are the non-correspondent situations between the source and target versions toward the same poetic image? What is category transfer and how does it provide guidance to the image translation? All these questions are to be explored in this thesis. And at the end of it, several strategies are put forward based on the category transferring models. The thesis attempts to provide some practical guidance to the poetic image translation.