The Reciprocal Interpretative Relationship Between Bilingual Mental Representations And Mental Process Of Translation

Bilingual activities entail complicated mental operation, of which many theoretical hypotheses have been constructed; the same is true of the mental process of translation. However, few studies have focused on their reciprocal interpretive relationship. The present research is intended to explore the possibility of the reciprocally interpretative function between bilingual mental representation theories and translation theories of mental operation through both deductive and inductive approaches. The purposes are multidimensional: the primary one is to look further into the factors, variables and mechanism involved in the bilingual mental activities covering that in translation; the secondary one is to test the validity of interpretative power of some mainstream theories in either area and the relation between them; moreover, the complementarity of research approaches in either case and between them can be established in some way; some related questions and assumptions are raised for further discussion and a linear description has been drawn to conclude the reciprocally interpretive relationship between the two fields.The author first reviews theories and hypotheses in both fields which gives a clear map about the current studies and expounds the background of the present study.Many bilinguals are supposed to be natural translators, and translators, either professional or amateur, are definitely bilinguals. The entangled relationship between bilingualism and translation is the very incentive that attracts many scholars who want to unravel the secret of the "black box". That the studies in both fields are mutually beneficial is based on the following assumptions: 1) Translation equivalents can be the object as well as a tool of bilingual memory research; 2)Translation effects can be taken as the result of bilingual operations (research findings) and can be reversely accounted for by bilingual memory hypotheses; 3)Empirical studies in bilinguals' semantic representations at all levels provide strong backup for the assumption that SL and TL share a common concept; and 4)Language proficiency of translators may feature the asymmetric pattern of bilingual lexicon storage. All these above-mentioned points present us a strong reciprocally interpretive power between bilingual mental representations and mental process of translation.Although some studies have been conducted to explore the interwoven relations between bilingual mental representations and mental process of translation, there is still much room for further investigations. The complementary research methods and approaches have cast possibilities on the further investigation. The matching model based on neuropsychological experiments set a good example, which may stride for the reality of L2 learning as well as the comprehension of translation from L2 to L1. However, more parameters such as schemata, pragmatic factors, etc. should be encompassed during the matching process. Furthermore, the debate on vertical translation vs. horizontal translation is discussed in this part as well.The article is concluded with a linear description of the reciprocally interpretive relationship between bilingual mental operation and the mental process of translation. In addition, the limitations of the present study are pointed out.