A Study On Li Bai's 17 English Versions Of Song You Ren From The Perspective Of Cognitive Construal

Poetry is the essence of language which uses highly concise language to express the author's rich emotions.Chinese classical poetry which performs this character more vividly employs concise language expressions to show the profound emotion and philosophy of authors.It is well known that literary translation is difficult while poetry translation is one of the most difficult.Though there are lots of scholars who study the translation of Chinese classical poetry and put forward many related translation theories,it seems that there are few scholars who apply Cognitive Linguistics theory to the study of translation.Due to the subjectivity in the process of translation,some translators hold that translation is uncertain,thus there is no unified objective standard.Other translators think that translation is not random,but is constrained to the embodied experience and the interaction between translators and the text.This thesis tries to apply the cognitive construal theory i.e.,scope,perspective,prominence and specificity,to the interpretation of translation by taking 17 English versions of Li Bai's poem Song You Ren as examples.It adopts quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis methods.We may conclude that the translation of Song You Ren is based on our cognitive construal formed in terms of our experience,which is also restrained by the original text.The translation is not randomly done by translators.With regard to scope,if translators want to correctly understand and express the meaning of the original text,the related encyclopedia knowledge need to be activated.In other words,translators need to have the related background knowledge.As for perspective,influenced by the perspective of the original poem,translators try to experience the subjective world of the author first and then it is their cognitive processing and finally they choose some perspectives to translate the poem.With regard to prominence,we find that except the translation of the fifth,sixth and seventh sentences,the rate of the figure/ground translation of the rest 5 sentences which are consistent with the original poem is more than 50%.It means that in the process of translation,translators do not arbitrarily translate the poem and all of them subject to the figure/ground of the original text.For the specificity factor,we find that the number adopted by all translators are more than 40 words of the original poem and 75% translators use 8 lines to translate this poem.The reason why they adopt more words than the source text is that they may want to be more specific and try to show more detail of the original poem.To sum up,translation is not arbitrary and random.It is influenced by the objectivity of things and also by translators' way of cognitive construal such as their life experience,culture,knowledge and so on.Through analyzing 17 English versions of Li Bai's Song You Ren,we hope that it can shed light on the following aspects: to offer a brand new perspective for the study and practice of translation;to help readers better understand the original text and the translated version.