Cognitive Style Of Feng Tang’s Translation Of Stray Birds

Stray Birds is a collection of poems from Rabindranath Tagore.It was first translated and introduced to China by Zheng Zhenduo,whose translation remains the most recognized version.Since Feng Tang’s retranslation of Stray Birds came out in July 2015,it has invoked great dispute and also drawn academic attention.The existing works of literature fail to elaborate on the creative side of Feng’s translation,including the specific examples and explanations for his creativity.The thesis sets out to study the creativity of Feng’s translation from the perspective of cognitive translation,trying to analyze the cognitive style of Feng’s translation under Tan’s cognitive stylistic framework(2019;2012a;2012b)for translation.The framework defines the cognitive style as the interplay of the coherent construal operations and the highlighted cognitive principles.Investigating the translation from the aspect of construal operations and cognitive principles,the thesis proposes that: 1.With the help of the framework,we can construct the possible cognitive resources for creativity in Feng’s translation behind the seemingly random translation.Theoretically,the translation relates to the source through construal operations 2.Feng highlights the cognitive change principle in translating Stray Birds,which is represented as the change of language schemata and utilizes different construal operations to achieve different balances of three cognitive principles.In addition to filling the gap of studies on Feng Tang’s translation of Stray Birds,the thesis also intends to shed some light on the future practice of retranslation and poem translation.Feng’s translation was published in Hongkong last year.Therefore,the thesis is meaningful in that it provides a neglected side of the story for Feng’s translation,which isn’t about faithfulness but what Feng Tang has achieved and created based on the original text.