A Report On The E-C Translation Of The Invariance Hypothesis:Is Abstract Reason Based On Image-Schemas?

This is a translation report on an English-Chinese practice.The translated text is The Invariance Hypothesis: Is abstract reason based on image-schemas?,which is an academic paper published in 1990 on the inaugural issue of Cognitive Linguistics by Professor George Lakoff,one of the founders of cognitive linguistics and a famous American linguist at the University of California,Berkeley.This paper is widely acknowledged as an overview of cognitive linguistics.So far,no Chinese version of this paper has been found.The translator has completed the translation of the body part of the paper,with a total of about 23,000 characters.The source text belongs to the non-literary text,so the structure is rigorous and the language is concise.The translator,despite some expectations and preparations,encounters a series of difficulties.The translator illustrates the corresponding translation methods in accordance with the encountered difficulties.For the professional terminology,the translator adopts the method of diction.For personal names and geographic names in proper nouns,the method of transliteration and annotation are used.Complex sentences are widely used in the source text,so the translator uses the method of sentence division and re-organization.In addition,for the reference in discourse cohesion,the translator adopts the method of amplification.In the source text,the poems are generally cited as examples,and the translator adopts the method of combining literal translation and free translation.Through this translation practice,the translator hopes to provide an opportunity for Chinese readers to have an in-depth understanding of cognitive linguistics on one hand,and reference for future translations of such texts by summarizing the gains and losses in the translation on the other.