The Cognitive Process Of Translating Tang Poems From The Perspective Of Conceptual Integration Theory

Although translation studies have been booming nowadays, few translation theorists can provide sufficient solutions to even some of the basic problems of translating. Generally speaking, most perspectives hold that meaning is objective, so translation is possible and the standard of translation should be to produce or represent the equivalent translated text to the source text. On the contrary, some other translation researchers regard meaning as totally subjective things, and they jump to the conclusion that translation is impossible. However, most of the studies have been done only from the linguistic angle, either listing out the prescriptive rules for translating or enumerating several translating methods. Thus the cognitive translation process (the "black box" operation in the translator's mind) has hardly been touched upon. The reason may be that this cognitive process happens too fast and is transitory for the translator to perceive. This difficulty is also what we feel in this study.This thesis proposes that Conceptual Integration Theory (CIT), initiated in 1985 by Fauconnier, based on the mental space theory, can provide a satisfactory answer to explaining translation. After some survey and research, the author of this thesis finds that translation is a conceptual integration process and this thesis attempts to generate the integration network of translation. Translation guided by CIT involves two phases of conceptual integration, i.e., de-integration (decomposing) phase of the source texts by translator, which creates Blend 1, in which the conceptual structures are drawn out and the integration of the conceptual structures with translator's bilingual capacity and conceptual knowledge, and integration (composing) phase of the target texts by translators, which creates Blend 2. The translating process is to reconstruct the mental representations of the communicated event which is formed in the de-integration process in the target language.The "multi-space model" proposed in the thesis demonstrates that translation process consists of two phases and the translator plays a decisive role in the process, which is different from previous studies on translation applying CBT when the translator's creativity is often ignored. Translation under the guidance of CBT is empiristic, dynamic and creative. The thesis will mainly explore how the Blend 2, i.e., the translational blending that emerges under the three operations in constructing the blend:composition, completion and elaboration. To make this study more scientific and reasonable, we have to restrict the scope of research further to the translation of poems with metaphors which can better trigger images in the readers'mind. The thesis analyzes the translation process of Tang Poems in the light of CBT in detail. The working mechanism and the applications of CBT in translation process are also discussed in the following chapters.