A Cognitive Context Approach To Legal Terminology Translation

This paper is an effort to apply Sperber & Wilson's theory of relevancy to explore the effects cognitive context has on legal terminology translating process and translation strategies. The author has made a review of the cognitive contextual correlation of relevancy and attempted to utilize the theory as guidance in translation practice. This paper is to prove that the translator's cognitive context towards the understanding of source text play important roles in translating.The research first introduces the static studies of context and points out the limitation of it. Then it expounds the notion and features of cognitive context, the relationship between cognitive context and relevance theory, the notion of the relevancy theory and the advancement of cognitive context over traditional context ideas. As for the legal terminology, the research introduces the notion, sources and the features of it.From the point of view of theory of relevancy, the author has also explored the interrelationship between cognitive context and legal terminology translation strategies and has revealed that cognitive context plays a positive role in the concrete translation strategies such as literal translation, free translation and meaning compensation in translation. A translator must surmount the difference existing in cognitive context, making an active communication to bridge the gap between both languages and cultures. Consequently, he or she can overcome the barriers of transmitting the information and achieve the optimal rendition.Translation is not only transference of languages, but also a transmission of cognitive information. The task for a translator is to remove the obstacles of the cognitive exchange appearing in two languages. For that reason, it is necessary for a translator to learn both languages well. What's more, he must acquaint himself with the non-language knowledge to form a right cognitive context, hence making an equivalent transference between the source language and the target language in order to achieve the equivalent pragmatic translation.