An Interdisciplinary Study On Cognitive Foundation Of Interpretation Theories

Although interpreting study only has a relatively short history no longer than 50 years, it has experienced significant revolution from personal writing to interdisciplinary research. By resorting to other disciplines, interpreting study has become more scientific and more convincing. This thesis will mainly focus on the cognitive aspects of four influential interpretation theories emerging from the four periods of interpreting study, namely, Information Processing Theory, Interpretive Theory, Daniel Gile's Effort Model and Relevance Theory. Concepts as attention, processing capacity, memory, knowledge, language comprehension, context and information processing approaches are not only the theoretical foundation and constructional elements of interpretation theories, but also broadly discussed and investigated in cognitive science. The exploration of cognitive issues under the background of representative disciplines in cognitive science, such as cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, linguistics and psychology of language, and on the basis of translation and interpretation theories will, to some extent, arouse people's interest in studying on cognition in the process of interpretation, which is in accordance with the trend of interpreting studies. By means of such an interdisciplinary study on the cognitive foundation of interpretation theories, we discover that the formation and development of interpretation theories are closely linked with the research and development of cognitive science, the latter provide the theoretical foundation and scientific evidence for the former. Besides, this kind of study will encourage interpretation researchers and practitioners to explore the cognitive factors in interpreting. With the help of the fruits of cognitive science, interpretation researchers and practitioners will continuously make progress in terms of theoretical and pedagogical improvement and perfection.