On The Translation Of Lexical Categories In Chinese And English From The Perspective Of Categorization Theory

As one of the basic theory of cognitive linguistics, categorization refers to the mental process, during which people interact with the world and categorize the various things in the world through analysis, judgment and classification. Lexicology has always been a key issue of linguistics. This thesis intends to solve the problem of lexical recategorization in the process of translation from the perspective of modern categorization theory.Lexical categories are thought to be the basic semantic units that can be transferred in the process of translation. In the view of cognitive linguistics, lexical category, cognitively and psychologically based, is something stored in our mind as a result of people's cognitive process. The translation of lexical categories is not just a process of code-switching, but a process involving the transfer of cognitive categories between two languages in nature. This thesis intends to explore the translation of lexical categories in Chinese and English under the framework of categorization theory with reference to the Chinese classic ShuiHuzhuan and its two English versions translated respectively by Sidney Shapiro and Pearl Buck.In this thesis, lexical categories are classified into mainly three kinds:general categories, including color terms, unit terms and actions; culture-specific categories, consisting of ecological culture, material culture, social culture, religious culture and linguistic culture; category extension, including metaphors and metonymies. Langacker's S, T scanning model is employed to evaluate the translation of Shapiro and Buck and the result can be summarized as:S=T (equivalent translation), S>T (overtranslation), S