Applications Of The Theory Of Prototypes And Basic-level Categories In Word Translation

This thesis is aiming to solve the category problem in translation from the perspective of the theory of prototypes and basic-level categories.Category problem in translation refers to the non-equivalence problem in word translation caused by the category differences between the source language and target language. For example, the category WORKER in English and the category工人in Chinese are seemingly equal but actually not. The embodiment character of word meaning is an important reason for this kind of differences. There are two kinds of embodiment: conceptual embodiment and functional embodiment. The embodied philosophy (Experientialism, Experiential Realism) is the base of the second-generation cognitive linguistics.Modern linguistics is today represented by three main approaches: the experiential view, the prominence view and the attentional view of language.The theory of prototype and basic-level categories is based on human being's experience and the main branch of cognitive linguistics on the experiential view. It is different from objectivism's method on categorization of our experience. It successfully solves the problems that classical category theory has.The theory of prototype and basic-level categories gives a new perspective on solving the category problem in translation. In this thesis we try to apply this theory to the field of word translation between Chinese and English to explore the category problem in translation.The prototypes and category levels are influenced by the cognitive models and cultural models. Because of the culture differences and language category differences, English words and Chinese words are not equivalent in the following ways: non-equivalence in prototypes, category domain, category level, cultural meaning and there is also absence of categories.The nature, model and process of word translation are given new interpretation from the perspective of the theory of prototypes and basic-level categories. The nature of word translation is the transfer of the cognitive categories from the source language to the target language. A new cognitive word translation model is given. The process of word translation is recategorization. It has three characters: recategorization within the same category domain, levels of recategorization and parasitic recategorization.