A Cognitive Approach To Translation Strategies Of Image-G Actualization

Image refers to iconic imagery,that is,"generalized imagery formed on the basis of human being's sensation and perception and also a high-level form of perceptual cognition"(Xia 2000: 126).Image translation is an important research topic in translation studies.In recent years,the interdisciplinary research of cognitive linguistics,cognitive psychology and translation studies have provided new theoretical perspectives and research methods for image translation studies within the framework of cognitive translatology.According to cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology,image in literary works is the mental representation of authors' referential association in regard to their affective and emotive extensibility,which possesses holistic Gestalt qualities.The organized Gestalt whole—Gestalt image(image-G)by nature,is not only a subjectively unified and artistically integrated aesthetic category,but also a sentimental artistic scene with cognitive subjects' aesthetic optimization.Thus,image-G actualization is a two-step processing by nature,involving translators' construal of image-G in source text and translators' construction of image-G in target text.As an important research realm in the field of cognitive translation,image-G actualization has aroused the widespread interest of scholars and quite a few research findings have been made.The existing research has focused on the studies of cognitive translation equivalence,cognitive model of discourse translation,translators' inter-subjectivity of source text,a cognitive approach to translation aesthetics,cognitive contexts and expressions in translation.However,the studies on translators' psycho-cognitive process and cognitive strategies of image-G actualization have been less involved.A systematic subject-object correlative mode of image-G actualization is expected to be established.In particular,the existing research fails to achieve the unity of translators' subjectival psychic reality and objective language realization of source text.On these premises,the research takes relevant notion,concepts and principles from cognitive linguistics,Gestalt psychology and cognitive translatology to probe into translators' construal of image-G in source text,construction of image-G in target text,and relevant cognitive translation strategies of image-G actualization.Considering that,on the basis of reviewing the existing literature,the research mainly uses qualitative research methods to describe and explain case studies of Xu Yuanchong's translation of classical Chinese poetry,with the aim of proposing cognitive translation strategies of image-G actualization.This research attempts to find answers to the following questions:(1)How do translators construe image-G in source text in the process of image-G actualization?(2)How do translators construct image-G in target text based on the construal of that in source text in the process of image-G actualization?(3)What cognitive translation strategies are adopted by translators in the process of construing image-G in source text and constructing of that in target text? And how are they motivated?The research has the following findings:(1)Image-G actualization in literary translation is a two-step course: First,translators' construal of image-G in source text and second,translators' construction of image-G in target text.Translators' construal of image-G in source text follows the mode of "embodiment ? cognition ? linguistic representation".First,translators' aesthetic embodiment of image-G is served as the cognitive basis for their construal.Second,translators' recognition of image-G in source text follows five perceptual organization principles in Gestalt psychology: principle of closure,principle of good continuity,principle of similarity,principle of proximity,and principle of symmetry.Third,there are five dimensions of image-G construal,that is,profiling,specificity,prominence,perspective and metaphor respectively.At last,various cognitive means are applied by translators in their conceptualization of image-G representation at lexical,sentential and textual levels.(2)On the basis of the construal of image-G in source text,translators then accordingly construct it in target text.Translators do their endeavor to realize image-G actualization from source text to target text,which is processed from three major aspects,namely,Gestalt of prosodic structure,Gestalt of syntactic structure and Gestalt of situational scene.There are four categories of corresponding relations between the constructed image-G in target text and the original one in source text: complete correspondence,inclusive correspondence,crossed correspondence,and disrelation,among which,the first one is ideal type and the rest are non-ideal types of image-G actualization.(3)Five major cognitive translation strategies are adopted by translators in the construction of image-G in target text based on the construal of image-G in source text,that is,image-G preservation strategy,which is motivated by the analogous substitution of equivalent prototype categories in image-G actualization;image-G reinforcement strategy,which is motivated by the internalization of poetic cultural cognitive models in image-G actualization;image-G restructuring strategy,which is motivated by the reappearance of image-G based on discourse intertextuality in image-G actualization;image-G accretion strategy,which is motivated by the supplement of semantic slot of default values in image-G actualization;image-G modulation strategy,which is motivated by the adaption of image-G based on composite deployment of different scenario/scene modes in image-G actualization.The contrastive analysis of several translated versions indicates that these five cognitive translation strategies are feasible and effective in translation practice of image-G actualization.Therefore,by means of the detailed research on image-G actualization in literary translation,translators' cognitive psychological process have been revealed and five cognitive translation strategies have been proposed in this paper.They provide valuable references for the study of cognitive psychological process in literary translation of image-G actualization and have profound guiding significance for translation practice.