The Representation Of Natural Imageries In Tang Poetry Translation In Light Of The Conceptual Blending Theory

Conceptual blending is a universal cognitive process proposed on the basis of mental space theory,which is a series of cognitive activities that mankind integrates part of the meaning of input information coming from different spaces selectively into a new conceptual structure..Fauconnier and Turner proposed a four-space theory,pointing out that “conceptual blending is operated in four basic spaces: Input Space I,Input Space II,Generic Space,and Blending Space”(Wang,2009,p11).Emergent structure is constructed through cross-space mapping and selective projection,composing,completing and elaborating,which derives from input spaces but different from input spaces.This paper considers that the cognitive process of translation is a conceptual blending process in which mental spaces interact with each other.The translation activity involves a cognitive process which is based on the translator's deconstruction of the source text and his or her reconstruction of a target text that is most similar to the source text.This process involves the translator's matching and conversion of two languages,the conjecture and matching of the original author's subjective thought and translator's thought,the comparison and reference of two cultures,their respective language features and the objective natural worlds.This complex process is the process of language interpretation and reconstruction of meaning,which can be explained by the theory of conceptual blending.Tang poetry is one of our most precious cultural heritages of the Chinese nation.Many English versions of Tang poems have also been translated owning to its far-reaching influence.To the twenty-first century,more Chinese translators devoted themselves to the translation of Tang poetry,among which Xu Yuanchong is a representative.Imagery is the basic element of poetry,which is the soul and life of poems.In the process of translating,the understanding and representation of imageries is the key to interpreting a poem and recreating its charm.To some extent,the process of translating a Tang poem into English is a process of deconstructing and reproducing the imageries in the poem.This thesis firstly introduces the research status of the Conceptual Blending Theory,poetic imagery,and Tang poetry and its imagery translation,elaborates the definition of several important concepts,presents the main content such as the process and types of Conceptual Blending Theory,and then reviews and summarizes the status quo of the application of conceptual blending into translation studies.Secondly,the author analyzes the translation process by adopting the Conceptual Blending Theory and then puts forward his own viewpoint: The translation of natural imageries involves three phases.The first one is the de-blending phase or cognition phase,during which the translator deconstructs the natural imagery in the source language.The second phase is the blending phase,during which the natural imagery in the source text gets reconstructed in the target language on the basis of the previous one,the translation being created.The third phase is the re-blending phase,in which the verification towards the translation results takes place.In the blending phase,the author further divides the imageries reappeared in the target language into three types from the perspective of conceptual blending: full-correspondence,semi-correspondence and non-correspondence respectively.Lastly,by means of qualitative research,the author analyzed the three phases that the representation of the sun,moon,mountain and river imageries experienced and the corresponding types after being blended in the second phase in light of the Conceptual Blending Theory.By selecting typical and representative natural imageries such as the sun,moon,mountain and river in Tang poems as corpora and trying to apply the Conceptual Blending Theory to interpret the representation of the above imageries in different translations from the cognitive level,the author finds,the Conceptual Blending Theory has strong explanatory power for the representation of the sun,moon,mountain and river imageries in Tang poetry translation.Besides,the three phases and three types proposed by the author from the perspective of Conceptual Blending Theory have rationality to explain the representation of the poetic imageries of the sun,moon,mountain and river.