An Exploration Into Mental Process Of Translation In The Framework Of Cognitive Metaphor

This is a systematic study of mental process in translation from the perspective of cognitive metaphor.The existing analysis of translation theories before 1990s has been focused on static comparisons of differences between linguistic forms, literary styles and cultures, but few has explored the process of translation from a psychological or cognitive view. The previous translation studies neglected the fact that translation is in essence a complicated psychological activity. The cognitive process in translation has long been neglected or insufficiently investigated.According to contemporary views on translation and metaphor, translation is not only the activity of interchange of two linguistic forms, but also a complicated cognitive and psychological process of implanting the conceptual events conceived by the source to the target. Metaphor is a conceptual phenomenon rather than a figure of speech. Owing to the intrinsic relationship between the two notions, translation and metaphor have much in common in terms of their literal meaning, related terms or concepts, mappings or projections as well as their working mechanisms. On the basis of their common features, this paper applies Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) put forward by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson and Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT) proposed by Gills Fauconniers and Mark Turner, which have been developing rapidly as the major force in cognitive linguistics in recent years, to study on the mental process of translation in an exploratory way. It aims at providing a unifying framework for the cognitive mental process in translation and testing the explanatory power of the two theories.By adopting two contemporary cognitive theories on metaphor, namely CMT and CBT, which play mutually complementary roles in elucidating the conceptual structure of human mind, the thesis has introduced a metaphorical approach to translation. The implication of CMT in translation field shows firstly the feasibility of metaphorical approach to translation. However, as the static research of metaphor, conceptual metaphorical approach is still lack of the consideration of culture elements and evokes controversies of translation strategies, which need to be settled by blending metaphorical translation theory. As for CBT, a network model is proposed to...