Prototype Category And Unit Of Translation

With the development of translation, unit of translation(UT) or translation unit has been a subject for the scholars. Since then the study of UT never stops and always keeps controversy for different scholars have different opinions. Traditional methods for UT determination could be generally classified into the form separation approach, semantic approach and textual functional approach. Later it is found that static and simple methods could not explain the actual translation process, so the diversified research begins: some scholars create new terms to describe UT; some present the flexibility of UT; some scholars should be a system and the members of the system work together by analyzing the advantages and limitations of different levels of language units as UT propose UT. From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, human cognition which is basis of cognition of meaning or understanding of meaning comes from the individual’s experience. As for translation, different translators have different cognitive reactions to the SLT. Therefore, the determination of UT between SLT understanding and TLT expressing is uncertain and the status of different levels of unit are different in translators’ cognition.Prototype category theory, as a modern theory, breaks the dichotomy of the classical categorization theory which has been influencing the philosophy and linguistics for two thousand years and has advantages to explain the uncertain nature. In prototype category theory, the members of the category do not have to share certain numbers of common attributes with each other but be connected by the family resemblance. Additionally not all the members can represent the category. At last the boundaries between the categories are fuzzy. This thesis adopting a qualitative analysis from the clues of the four features of prototype category and taking UT as the subject testify that UT could be seen as a prototype category.This study treats UT as a prototype category and all the members including syllable and phoneme, morpheme, word, phrase, clause, sentence, paragraph or text that could be seen as UT as the members of the category and prove that the members are connected by the family resemblance not by the common attributes. Furthermore, through providing evidence of the salient status of sentence in language use and translation process, sentence as prototype of UT category is proposed. At last, the fuzzy boundaries between the categories have been proved. As a result, in translation practice the translators usually take sentence―the prototype of UT category as the center and produce the translation work by combining with other members of UT category.