Image-G Actualization In The Translation Of Classical Chinese Poetry

With the rapid development of theories and research methods in the field of cognitive science,various hypotheses and theories have been proposed for process-oriented translation studies which give powerful explanations to the translator’s cognitive activities.Gestalt psychology emphasizes the importance of the whole by claiming that the comprehension of the whole is not the mechanical superposition of its parts.Mary Snell Hornby initiated translation studies by referring to Gestalt psychology and proposed an integrated approach to translation.She holds that construction of TT is a process of generating a holistic schema.However,how to apply the theory that lays the stress on psychological cognition to the translation of poetic images,remains to be further explored.As externalized expressions of poets’ aesthetic and emotive experience,aesthetic images offer a gateway to appreciate the artistic conception and aesthetic feelings of poetry.In the Tang frontier poetry,images of high aesthetic and cultural values present the unique landscape of the borderland and poets’ patriotism.To actualize the aesthetic images of the Tang frontier poetry in TT,it is necessary to break away from discussions of objective criteria such as equivalence and translation techniques.Therefore,researches on image actualization from the perspective of Gestalt psychology should lay stress on the transformation of Gestalt qualities holistically.Based on this presupposition,a systematic research on representing the aesthetic value and artistic conception of poetry is conducted in this thesis.By reviewing the relevant theories of Gestalt psychology,this thesis aims to reveal cognitive path of decoding,perceiving and reconstructing the Gestalt qualities of images and work out cognitive methods to actualize image-G of the Tang frontier poetry in translation.Through the methods of literature consulting,case analysis and comparative analysis,it proves the validity of cognitive methods in the translation of image-G under the guidance of Gestalt perceptual organizational principles and draws the following conclusions:First,images in classical Chinese poetry possess Gestalt qualities.Ideal actualization of image-G in TL is premised on the basis of translators’ holistic perception of aesthetic images and artistic conception of poems.In the process,only by considering the aesthetic experience of the poet can the translator form a holistic cognitive schema.Second,translators’ perception of classical Chinese poetry is a top-down process.In this process,perceptual organizational principles governing cognitive activities of human beings,namely,the figure-ground segregation principle,closure principle,similarity principle and perceptual constancy principle,set the cognitive path for translators to identify the aesthetic characteristics of image-G.Third,based on the construal of image-G in the Tang frontier poetry,four cognitive translation methods(prominence,compensation,replacement and generalization)are proposed to actualize the image in TT.It is proved that the above translation methods are feasible to represent the Gestalt qualities of aesthetic images and transform the artistic conception of poetry holistically.