The Application Of Idealized Cognitive Model In Translation

Growing up in the different natural and social environments, English and Chinese people have different social culture, history, tradition and religious beliefs. English and Chinese language systems are reflecting the differences of cognitive structure and thinking modes. In English-Chinese translation practice, there exists misunderstanding caused by the translator’s been affected by conceptual meaning of source language. So translators should fully consider the differences of language environment, national culture and cognitive structure from the respective of source and target readership. Thus semantic misunderstanding caused by different cognitive structures can be efficiently solved in the translation. With the application of idealized cognitive model in the translation, people’s cognitive models can be transformed into general concepts.This paper studies cognitive strategies in translation from the perspective of the theory of idealized cognitive models. It identifies the types of source language ICM and target language ICM relations, i.e., overlapping, contradiction and absence of ICM. Corresponding translation strategies, i.e., domestication and foreignization in the translation of The Informationist are then discussed. For overlapping of ICM caused by similar living environment or integration of foreign culture, domestication and foreignization translation strategies are respectively applied. For contradiction of ICM caused by the difference of social and cultural environment, domestication translation strategy is the first choice. And for absence of ICM caused by the gap between Chinese and English culture, foreignization is preferred and annotation can also be given if necessary. The application of idealized cognitive model provides an effective way for text understanding in the translation of thrillers.