The Interpretation Of Covert Space Blending Theory For Translation Process And Its Guiding Function

In recent years, translation studies have been broadened with the development of cognitive linguistics. Translation is thought to be a cognitive activity and is studied by employing the related theories of cognitive linguistics, such as Space Blending Theory (SBT) and Relevance Theory (RT), the two main inferential theories of cognitive pragmatics. However, both RT and SBT expose their own limitations to pragmatic inference. By analogy, I maintain that RT and SBT will have their limitations to accounting translation. Although many scholars have respectively been analyzing their limitations to accounting translation, till now no one has accounted translation process in terms of Covert Space Blending Theory (CSBT)—— the integrated theory of RT and SBT. My dissertation is a tentative research on the application of CSBT to interpret translation process so as to study the nature of translation better and to guide translation practice and translation teaching. Covert space blending theory (Jiang Yong, 2004) is the integration of relevance theory (RT) and space blending theory (SBT). Both RT and SBT expose their own limitations to pragmatic inference: neither could RT offer the online inferring process and steps in detail nor offer procedure of the cross-space blending process of the concepts, nor interpret the human's capacity to create the new structure with the known concepts; SB does not study the conceptual integration in the aspect of verbal communication so it ignores the influence and limitation of the speaker's contextual assumptions on and to the cross-space mapping of the concepts and their integration. CSBT combines the nucleus thoughts of the two theories and makes the two theories mutual amendment. SB borrows relevance principle and cognitive context of RT and RT borrows the analyzing methods of SBT. Inevitably their limitations will be shown when the two theories are used to interpret translation process. Relevance principle and cognitive context of RT gives translation process macro-guiding principles but RT could not give the detailed translation process. Also RT emphasizes on the inferential process of language understanding and pays less attention on the generation process of the target text. SBT emphasizes on the generating process of the target text and pays less attention on the inferential process of the source text. But in interpreting the generating process of the target text, it ignores many factors such as the receptors etc. CSBT could effectively amend RT and SBT in translation...