Translatability In A Global Context:Image Schema Theory,a Cognitive Rationale

The word “globalization” has been infiltrating itself from academic communities into our daily life since the 1980 s.Intuitively,globalization has brought forth the“compression” of time and space,which further conduces to the increasingly frequent cross-cultural communication,and the whole human civilization is going towards universality and commonality.According to the experiential philosophy of cognitive linguistics,the universality and commonality actually results from the convergence of human experiences.Image Schema features its dynamism and coherence,coinciding well with the temporal and spatial consistency under globalization process,which provides cogent interpretation for the convergence of human experiences.Namely,globalization in a sense is the consistency between human beings’ cognition.Based on that,this thesis advances towards the cognitive rationale of translatability and its tendency under the cognitive universality and commonality.First,globalization is a process developing towards universality and commonality with its mechanism and paradigms.Also,globalization is a process pointing at human beings per se.And it can be noticed that globalization,man and civilization make for an inherently consistent “trinity” with relation to universality and commonality.In view of that,this research takes civilization as the practical object for cognitive interpretation,to figure out the cognitive essence of globalization.Experientialism fits well with globalization,man and civilization,and lays the philosophical foundation of this research,which strongly justifies the Image Schema Theory in explaining universality and commonality.To explain and predict human beings’ cognitive tendency under the globalization process with Image Schema Theory is an unheard-of case.And image schema entails the changeability of human beings’ cognition from experiences,which also accounts for the universality and commonality tendency.In other words,it means that foreignness and heterogeneity are weakened,dissolved and further internalized through cognitive experiences,into the cognitive system.There is no doubt that cognitive consistency would greatly influence translation and translatability.In terms of the cognitive essence,translatability lies in the degree,to which the cognitive contexts and image schemata of TL text coincide with that of SL text.Namely,translatability is the coincidence degree of experiential worlds.This can be demonstrated with reference to the cognitive translation process of translators and the general recipients.According to this judgment,it can be predicted that globalization would increasingly intensify translatability,for cognitive universality and commonality implicates the coincidence of experiential worlds.In essence,translatability depends on the cognitive universality and commonality arising from the convergence of experiential worlds under the globalization process.