A Cognitive Meaning Construction Perspective On Translation Equivalence

The accuracy and equivalence of message in the process of translating the source language into the target language are the core issues in language translation practice.During his long-term translation work,Eugene A.Nida,a famous American translator and linguist,has proposed “formal equivalence”,“dynamic equivalence” and “functional equivalence” by summing up his translation experience.Influenced by Nida’s theory,many scholars have studied translation equivalence from different perspectives.However,due to the influence of the predominant “container” metaphor,Nida and his followers mainly emphasize literally form,content and style equivalence between the source language and the target language,but have paid little or no attention to the role of the knowledge structures of source language readers and target language readers in the translation process.This study attempts to deal with translation equivalence from the perspective of cognitive meaning construction.The cognitive meaning construction approach in cognitive linguistics holds that meaning construction runs through the whole process of human’s thinking.And language has no meaning itself,or language without context has no meaning.Language merely functions as a prompt or access point to trigger human beings’ encyclopedic knowledge structure in their brains.As a result,for target language readers,the target language is only a prompt or access point,which needs to trigger their encyclopedic knowledge to construct the meaning of the source language.Two questions will be answered in this study: 1)What is the nature of translation from cognitive meaning construction perspective? 2)Based on the first question,what is the criterion of translation equivalence from cognitive meaning construction perspective?This study believes that translation is a dynamic process of conceptualization,and encyclopedic knowledge,rather than the literal meanings of words,phrases or sentences,plays a key role in the translation process.In respect to the criterion of translation equivalence,this study argues that translation equivalence is essentially the knowledge structure triggered by the target language to its readers being roughly equivalent to the knowledge structure triggered by the source language to its source readers.For the translation with common human cognitive experience,as long as the literal translation or direct prompts can trigger readers’ corresponding knowledge structures,translation equivalence will be achieved.However,people in different cultures have their own unique lifestyles and cognitive experiences.For those kinds of translation,direct translation or prompts is not enough to achieve translation equivalence,because there are no similar knowledge structures in their brains.Different translation strategies,therefore,should be adopted to help the target readers to construct new cognitive structures similar to those of the source readers.