A Study Of Chinese-English Poetry Translation From The Perspective Of Cognitive Construal Theory

As a literary genre, poetry puts emphasis on emotion. It expresses a poet’s cognitivefeelings and aesthetic tastes with unique rhetorical languages, various literary imageriesand specific cultural implications. Most of previous Chinese-English poetry translationstudies embody the unilateral pursuit of surface equivalence on the text message withoutsystematic theoretical proofs, taking translation as transferring the semantic content withtruth-values. Cognitive construal theory in the framework of cognitive grammar provides anew linguistic approach to deal with the problem.Langacker discusses imagery in the perspective of semantic structures and putsforward cognitive construal theory, which refers to concrete ways for linguistic symbols toconstruct certain situations in the mind. Different image schemata, cognitive images andlinguistic representations led by conceptualizers’ different construals would be found in thesame situation. Based on the theory, the cognitive relevancy between different translatedtexts and the source text will be discussed in the paper with the investigation of sixconstrual dimensions, concerning scope, background, specificity, perspective, salience andcognitive metaphor.The paper proposes that within the interaction between a translator and an author, asame semantic content would be influenced by different cognitive construals, leading todifferent cognitive images. A translator should utilize the focal adjustment according to theoriginal cognitive horizon when interpreting images from the source text so as to reach theoptimal resemblance of cognitive images between the source text and the translated text.Chinese-English poetry translation study from the perspective of cognitive construaltheory could help better interpret the source text and evaluate the translated text, thusfurther providing better translations.