Translating Alien Sources From Chinese To English:Reflecting On The Translation Strategies From A Cognitive Approach

This study is based on the Chinese to English translation of the book Deng Xiaoping Visited the United States for Nine Days.The translation of alien sources is considered as a major challenge and therefore is highlighted in this practice-based research."Alien" is as opposed to indigenous,meaning that such sources are not indigenous or familiar in the English language system.To clarify,such alien sources are indigenous in Chinese language system but alien in the English language system.The translator adopted methodological tools from cognitive linguistics to reflect on how she managed to translate the three categories of alien sources,namely the figurative language,the four-character words and their composition of sentences,and the phrases with cultural connotations from the author's domestication translation strategy.The cognitive approach was chosen because it supports the cognitive nature of translation as a mediating process between the Chinese conceptual domain and the English counterpart.It is found that the translation of alien sources usually involves the strategies of mining the associated meanings of the source text,finding the conceptually equivalent counterparts in the target text,adjusting grammatical structure of the source text,widely consulting relevant references etc.The translator suggests that a reflection journal be kept for recording the cognitive process as she progresses with her translation project in the future.Such journal is expected to provide substantial sources for reflecting on the cognitive process and strategies adopted during translation.