A Study On News Translation From The Perspective Of Cognitive Linguistics

In the light of cognitive linguistics, particularly the conceptual blending theory proposed by Giles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, the author holds that translation is a cognitive activity closely related to human cognition and bodily experience and what the translator needs to do is re-experience the cognition and mental or physical experience of the source language writer and transfer it into the target language with reference to the target language readers'cognition and experience. Chinese and Western peoples have different living environment and lifestyle; and therefore they have distinct perception, cognition, understanding and experience of the objective world. The ways they express the objective world in their own languages are correspondingly different. In translation, the unpacking of the source language text and the reconstructing of the target language text are cognitive activities via not only abstract concepts, but also the routes and courses of mappings, clashing and integrating between source language space, target language space and the translator space. In other words, translation is the blend of concepts concerned in the two language spaces via the translator's mental work. The same is true with the process of news translation. According to the relationship between the cognitive association from the source text and the constructing frame triggered by input space, the author proposes four types of blending in news translation (direct projection (mappings); the"d"element of the source text space directly projected into the target text space; the"e"element of the translator space directly projected into the translated version space; elements"d"and"e"projected into the translated space simultaneously) each of which can be fit for the four blending modes (simplex network, mirror network, single-scope network, and double-scope network), proposed by Fauconnier. The detailed elaboration vie living news examples may disclose partially the lurking iceberg of human's cognition.The combination of conceptual blending theory with news translation has supplied an entirely new perspective for both of the fields and will definitely facilitate the development and perfection of both researchers. To some extent this thesis is also helpful in interdisplinary studies.