Pragmatic Enrichment In C-E Legal Text Translation From The Perspective Of Cognitive Context

With the development of cognitive science,the relationship between the study of translation and cognitive science is getting closer and closer,thus cognitive context will play an important role in legal text translation.Meanwhile,people’s experiences and cognition in different countries will lead to different legal concepts or expressions in legal language.Therefore,in the process of C-E legal text translation,it is necessary for the translator to fully evaluate the reader’s cognitive context and to carry out pragmatic enrichment to process the uncertain meanings.Pragmatic enrichment is regarded as a lexical pragmatic phenomenon,which refers to a cognitive process in which communicators use contextual information to process various uncertain meanings in language use.Based on the study of cognitive context,this thesis attempts to analyze pragmatic enrichment in C-E legal text translation.By analyzing some examples of legal texts,the author has the following findings:（1）the cognitive contextual factors including expectations,hypotheses,religious beliefs,cultural assumptions and mental state can be embodied in legal text;（2）the present study discusses four types of pragmatic enrichment in C-E legal text translation: the deictic enrichment,enrichment based on the thematic roles,enrichment based on discourse relations and enrichment based on implicatures;（3）in the process of pragmatic enrichment in C-E legal text translation,the translator’s knowledge script can be stimulated so as to evaluate English readers’ cognitive context,then the translator retrieves knowledge structures stored in the memory,namely,psychological schema to construct appropriate contextual assumptions to meet English readers’ reading expectations.The findings of this thesis not only contribute to further research of C-E legal text translation but also help the English readers learn more about the Chinese legal system.