Adjustment Strategies Of Translation Distance In The Republic Of Wine Within Cognitive Theory

In the process of literature translation, owing to the differences of area, history, living habits, cultural customs, religious belief and thinking ways between westerners and easterners, literature translation is not likely to be zero translation.Translation distance contains several types:textual distance, historical distance, identity distance, cultural distance, aesthetical distance and operative distance.This paper roughly divides them into two types:objective distance and artificial distance. Artificial distance is required to solve various problems caused by objective distance. The existence of objective distance also gives the space to judge and adjust to translators. This paper uses cognition and transformation mode of aesthetic images within cognitive theory to discuss the principles to follow and strategies to adjust in the time of operating translation distance between the source language and the target language so that realize the excellent reappearance of aesthetic images in target language. This paper, based on the chief translator Howard Goldblatt’ version, takes Nobel Prize winner MoYan’ magic realism work The Republic of Wine as a good example to discuss the adjustment strategies of translation distance. Whether to widen or shorten the translation distance, to take image supplement or change the image, translators is to realize the dynamic equivalence between the source language and target language and cultural communication.The paper includes six chapters:Chapter one introduces the background and significance of this study. In the part of background lists some scholars’ achievement and their opinions about translation, translation distance and the research development of this aspect. The purpose of this paper is to find the disadvantages of their studies. The understanding of cultural images is still inadequate and translators in the field of translation can not make a systematic discussion about transmission of cultural images in theory. This paper mainly researches on translation distance based on American Sinologist translator Howard Goldblatt’s translated work The Republic of Wine within the cognitive theory.In chapter two, the paper introduces the background, intention, plot summary of the novel The Republic of Wine and the basic introduction of its author and translator. In this part, we use large sentences of level to introduce the style of Howard Goldblatt and his translation opinions towards translation. Another one is about Chinese writer MoYan, as the first Chinese Nobel Prize winner, his writing experience, his works, his style of writing, his reputation at home and abroad, and cooperation with Howard Goldblatt.The third chapter explains the origin of translation distance and different scholars’ views on it. Translation distance’s types as well as the translation distance forms and their interrelation are listed. Then causes of existent translation distance are also studied. What’s more, the adjustment strategies of translation distance are proposed.In the fourth chapter, the author analyses the adjustment strategies in literary translation within cognitive domain by using the cognitive principles of literary translation, through the aesthetic conception, relationship between image and the image schema and the cognition mode of transmission of imagery. And by listing the cultural factors influencing the transmission of imageries, the paper reveals that context is an important role in literary translation.Chapter five offers a lot of translation examples from The Republic of Wine to analyze the adjustment strategy of translation distance. When the source language and target language have the same or similar aesthetic images, we can shorten the distance of language’s surface structure. By the same token, when the aesthetic image between the source language and target language differ, we can widen the distance of language’s surface structure by changing and supplementing the images. It is the different cognitive contexts between the source text readers and the translation readers that result in cultural default phenomenon between source language and target language. Image supplementing is a strategy used by translators through adding cultural information to the target language context. The last chapter mainly draws a conclusion about this paper, including the translation distance, cognitive theory, imagery transformation, and the materials relating to The Republic of Wine, its writer and translator, adjustment strategies of translation distance. Especially, the study has a lot of limitations and suggestion for future to study.