On Cognitive Complement In Interpreting

With increasing international communication, the importance of interpreting, a newly arisen industry, has become more distinct. And its unique work quality and characteristics have attracted more and more attention from the translation academic circle. It's a long-held misunderstanding that to be capable of speaking a foreign language is equal to be capable of doing the interpreting work.As one of the founders of the interpretive theory of translation, Seleskovitch has pointed out in the last century that language knowledge is necessary, but"cognitive complement"is even more important, otherwise language itself would be just symbols and codes that do not bear any meaning. To stress"cognitive complement"is to stress the subject position of"human"in translation activities, which is also in accordance with the principle of communication science, that is, without the participation of people there would be no communication. Only by effective and accurate"cognitive complement"can we produce equivalent passage or discourse and can we say meaning is successfully translated. However, academic researches in this aspect are few.In this thesis the author firstly combs out the concept and connotation of"cognitive complement"in the interpretive theory of translation, and finds out in this process that even in the latest treatise of the interpretive theory—La traduction aujourd'hui– le modèle interprétatif (Translation: The Interpretive Model) the description about cognitive complement is ambiguous, which leads to different interpretation and comprehension about the connotation of cognitive complement in the interpretive theory. Then on the basis of absorbing the research results of related translation theories, such as knowledge schema theory and Liu Miqing's interpretation theory, this thesis proposes an improved definition of"cognitive complement"and its categorization. The author defines"cognitive complement"as extra-linguistic knowledge and factors, from which useful information necessary for successful interpretation in addition to linguistic knowledge and skills can be obtained. Its main sources are summarized to be three categories: cognitive baggage, cognitive context and communicational environment. And cognitive baggage can be further classified into world knowledge, intercultural communication knowledge and interpreting professional knowledge. Based on such definition and classification, this thesis analyzes real interpreting cases of press conference, which is both support for each category and further test of the rationality of"cognitive complement"and such classification. Finally, through theoretical research and case analysis about the"cognitive complement"in interpreting, this thesis, after answering a series of questions, such as what is cognitive complement and what are its sources, arrives at the conclusion that we need to enhance our cognitive complement capacity in interpreting practice and teaching and we should deal with it mainly from three aspects of textbook compiling, course designing and enhancement of cognitive complement awareness.