A Discussion Of The Translator’s Subjectivity From The Cognitive Linguistic View On Translation

Derived from embodied philosophy(Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Y. Wang, 2002, p. 9), cognitive linguistics(CL) holds that human language could not exist without humans’ experience and perception. Influenced by CL, translation researchers start to reassess translation texts from a cognitive view. All this contributes to the advent of the cognitive linguistic view on translation(CLVT): Translation is an experience-based cognitive activity where the translator expresses the meaning of the source text in the target language.Researches on translation subjects, in recent years, have been in intense attention. Subjectivity has especially been catching more eyes. Most previous studies, however, lay much stress on textual meaning while CLVT puts the translator in a crucial position and focuses on the creator of meaning. Moreover, there are few researches on translator subjectivity carried out under the guidance of CLVT(Y. Wang, 2005). In this view, it is of absolute necessity to look at textual translation from the perspective of CLVT.Under the theoretical guidance of CLVT, this thesis takes Howard Goldblatt’s English translation of Daughter of the River as its study material in the research of translator subjectivity. The thesis attempts to answer the following questions: Can CLVT be employed in studying translator subjectivity shown in Daughter of the River? How to apply CLVT to the study of translator subjectivity? How can the translator achieve harmonious translation from CLVT?To answer the above three questions, the thesis lays stress on three aspects of CLVT – prominence principle, cognitive metaphor and perspective – to discuss the translator’s initiative and passivity and the translation methods employed by the translator. Besides, the thesis analyzes how the translator selects proper translation strategies aiming at the achievement of his/her initiative. The research finds that cognition has an impact on the whole processes of decoding the source text and encoding the target one; in other words, close connections exist between CLVT and the translator’s subjectivity. The study also finds that CLVT can lead the translator to perceive factors that affect his/her passivity during the process of multiple interactions with the author, the source text and the target reader so as to stimulate the translator’s creativity for the aim of harmonious translation. In the hope of an objective description of translation practice, the author of this thesis, from a cognitive perspective, focuses on the improvement in the translator’s actual translation.