Cognitive Context And Translation

Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson have proposed relevance theory in 1986, which is viewed as the theoretical foundation of cognitive pragmatics. In its accounting for translation, the cognitive context is of great significance. This thesis applies the cognitive context to translation theory and practice against the theoretical background of relevance theory, aiming at revealing the intervening effects and functions of the cognitive context in translation process, and expatiating the significance of the concept in translation theory within the framework of relevance theory. It is hoped that the present study will provide a keen insight into the translation research and that it can be revelatory to the translation researchers and practitioners as well as the translation teaching. There are five parts in this thesis. The first part is the introduction to the thesis, including a review of Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory and its theoretical position in cognitive pragmatics. It also covers a brief introduction of the significance of the cognitive context as relevance theory accounts for translation, a survey of the current studies in this field, and the methodology of the present study as well. Chapter one briefly reviews the interdisciplinary development of translation studies from the perspective of semiology, hermeneutics, linguistics and communication. The focus of this chapter is the translation study from the perspective of relevance theory. In particular, Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory mainly concerning communication and cognition views translation as an ostensive-inferential process, which, besides the codes transference, also contains the dynamic inference by the cognitive context. Also, the significance and limitations of this thesis are mentioned in this chapter. Chapter two discusses the cognitive context from the comparative point of view, in order to present a clear idea about it. By comparison, the cognitive context is different with the traditional context in four aspects. First, the cognitive context is essentially a psychological construct rather than the physical environment in the context in the previous studies, which is viewed as the traditional context. Second, the range of the cognitive context is not smaller than the traditional context. It is the combination of traditional context with the psychological assumptions, which are projected and formed by the objective surroundings. Third, in the operating state of communication, the cognitive context is characterized with its instantaneousness and selectiveness, instead of being a preceding, given and static concept. Fourth, the cognitive context can be classified into the macro-and micro-cognitive context, simplifying the fussy classification in the traditional studies. Chapter three is the part applying the cognitive context theory to translation practice. The intervening effects and functions of the cognitive context are discussed and demonstrated by groups of examples. The cognitive context has three intervening effects to translation in the entireprocess. First, the SL text readers'cognitive context intervenes the SL text writer. Second, the SL text writers'encoding way intervenes the translators'cognitive context. Third, the TL text readers'cognitive context intervenes the translator. As for these effects intervening the translation process, the translator should attach enough importance to them and employ corresponding strategies. Furthermore, the cognitive context, from the angle of the translator, has three functions. First, the translator can reveal the cultural connotations by means of enriching the cognitive context. Second, the translator can analyze the logical relations among sentences and reconstruct the logical text in target language by means of the cognitive context. Third, the translator can first receive the ostensive act of communication and seek the relevance, and then make the pragmatic eduction to attain the implicated meaning by means of the cognitive context. Thus, for a translator, to construct the cognitive context is necessary. This requires the translator firstly to enrich his/her knowledge schemata in the cognitive context, especially to exquisitely master the source language and the target language, as well as the cultures. Due to the dynamic features of the cognitive context, the translator should secondly make more efforts to research on the differences of the cognitive models subordinated to the languages. Furthermore, some revelatory suggestions are concluded for translation teaching. (1) Students should ground solid foundation and construct the rational framework of knowledge, which are primarily required for translation. In other words, a translation student should first of all be...