On Concept As Unit Of Translation In C-E Translation

Translation process, as the same as all the language communication activities, is a complex process involving a variety of choices. Whatever and however we translate are related to the translator’s choices of translation unit. In the early stage of translation studies, translators treated the word as translation unit. But for its drawbacks, studies of translation unit developed from translating the word as UT to sentence as UT. However, since a sentence in different contexts has different roles and communicative functions, the sentence as translation unit has its limitations. With the development of text study, the text started to step into translation. Translation unit has already extended from word, sentence to text.Since the previous traditional translation units have their own disadvantages, from a psychological cognitive perspective, this thesis makes concept as translation unit which outweighs all the others. From analysis of the cognitive psychological activities of translators, a conclusion is made that concept is a basic unit of human’s thought, thereby a basic unit of translating process. There are three steps to make translation in terms of cognitive psychology:(1) translators have the concept (marked concept1) of the. source language completely understood and make figure of their references;(2) then they form a new concept (marked concept2) according to the translators’ own culture, custom or other related subjective factors,(3) and finally at the last step express it into the target language. In this sense, concept is a possible unit for translators establishing the choice of translation.It is also operable to make C-E translation with concept as unit of translation. Concept is as flexible and changeable as unit of translation. At the word level, concept as UT at the most time means concept to concept translation involving the word selection from translator’s mental lexicon. At the sentential level, concept as UT is analyzed with propositions. The relation of two or three concepts forms a proposition. Besides, the type of concepts is determined by the specific textual context.