On the Role of Cognitive Environment of Translation for English- Chinese Translation

Abstract

This paper put forward the concept of cognitive environment of translation based on the concept of cognitive context and proposed world knowledge, language knowledge and translation knowledge as its three constituents. World knowledge can also be referred to as encyclopedic knowledge, including all the knowledge acquired about diverse aspects of internal and external life through direct and indirect experience. Language knowledge refers to all the knowledge about the phonetics, phonology, lexicology, syntax, pragmatics, stylistics, etc. of the two languages involved and the comparative and contrastive features between the two languages. Translation knowledge concerns all the knowledge about the strategies and techniques for translation in general and specific solutions applicable for the translation between the two languages in question. The three types of knowledge get involved at different stages of translation: world knowledge and language knowledge about the source text facilitate accurate understanding of the source text, knowledge about the target language and knowledge about the comparative and contrastive features between the source and the target language, in combination with translation knowledge help with the translation process. All the knowledge can be activated more than once in case any uncertainty occurred at understanding or translation stages. As regards English-Chinese translation, translators are expected to use Chinese words, syntactic and textual structures most acceptable to the Chinese readers to replace the original English text, rendering them as close as possible in content, style and receptor effect. Efforts must be made to cater to the Chinese conventions of language use. Three major suggestions, among others, can be summarized in the paper. The first one is to use suitable words or expressions to match the Chinese ways of expression in various cases. The second one is to break the chains off the long and sophisticated English sentences, using shorter Chinese ones with a subject or theme, converting the nouns in English back to the verb or adjective they are derived from, etc. The third is to re-organize the textual structure of the target text according to the temporal, spatial and logical ways of expression in Chinese.