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ISSN 1712-8056[Print]
Canadian Social Science ISSN 1923-6697[Online]
Vol. 16, No. 5, 2020, pp. 39-43 www.cscanada.net
DOI:10.3968/11732 www.cscanada.org
An Overview of Cognitive Translation Studies
CHEN Yi[a],*
[a]
School of Foreign Languages, Guang Dong University of C h e n , Y. ( 2 0 2 0 ) . A n O v e r v i e w o f C o g n i t i v e Tr a n s l a t i o n
Science&Technology, Dongguan, China. Studies. Canadian Social Science, 16 (5), 39-43. Available from:
*
Corresponding author. h t t p : / / w w w. c s c a n a d a . n e t / i n d e x . p h p / c s s / a r t i c l e / v i e w / 11 7 3 2
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.396811732
Received 12 April 2020; accepted 15 May 2020
Published online 26 May 2020
Abstract INTRODUCTION
With the development of social economy and science and
technology, translation has promoted the development of Context is the only factor that determines semantics.
various industries and increased international exchanges Without context, there is no semantics (Sun Li, 2013).
in various fields. As an important means of connecting It can be seen from this that context is the basis for
two different languages, translation is extremely people to understand the meaning of words. Since the
important. Translation studies as an independent 1980s, cognitive pragmatics has emerged. From the
discipline has a relatively short development time. perspective of psychology, cognitive pragmatics regards
However, research scholars have always attached great context as a psychological structure, namely cognitive
importance to the study of translation methods. Cognitive context. Translation activity is also a kind of verbal
translation studies is an important translation method in communication. The translation process is actually an
the translation discipline. Therefore, it is imperative to explicit-inference process (Lu Caihong, 2012). In this
strengthen the study of cognitive translation. The research process, cognitive context plays an important role.
on the cognitive process of translation has made great Communication is by no means a direct transfer of
progress in the past three decades. Since the beginning of information. From the source cognitive domain to the
the 21st century, it has combined with cognitive science target domain, participants need to adjust the cognitive
and used the latest scientific and technological methods environment, highlight the meaning, make relevant
to produce many research methods that are convenient reasoning and cooperate with other thinking mechanisms.
for collecting experimental data, and has achieved a lot Since the middle and late 20th century, as Western
of research results. This article is an overview of the translation studies gradually changed from translations to
research on cognitive translation studies, pointing out translators, the translation community began to introduce
that the theoretical basis of cognitive translation studies concepts and methods of cognitive science to study the
is cognitive psychology. The research methods in the psychological processes of translators (Lu Caihong,
cognitive psychology discipline are adopted. Moreover, 2012). Cognitive science provides extremely valuable
the cognitive context has a great influence on discourse methods and inspirations for studying the operation
understanding and plays an important role in restricting process of the translator’s brain, and brings a new
translation. It is an important part of cognitive translation perspective to translation research. Cognitive translation
studies. studies refer to translation studies based on cognitive
science, especially cognitive psychology (Tan Yesheng,
Key words: Cognitive context; Translation process;
2012). Researchers use cognitive science theories and
Cognitive translation
methods to explain translation phenomena and reveal
39 Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture
An Overview of Cognitive Translation Studies
the cognitive processes and laws of oral and written In their view, translation is essentially an information
translation. Cognitive translation studies believe that processing process (Miao Ju&Zhu Lin, 2011). Therefore,
translation is a kind of cognitive activity (Lu Weizhong, the information processing mode, processing strategy and
Wang Fuxiang, 2013). While language conversion is processing unit adopted by the translator in the translation
only external and superficial, cognitive operation is process have become the main content of cognitive
internal and deep. Therefore, translation studies should translation research. In addition, the author believes that
examine the operation on the cognitive level. On the translation capabilities and their acquisition, as well as the
basis of introducing the theoretical background of translators’ cognitive efforts, are also important aspects of
cognitive translation, this article discusses the research cognitive translation research.
content and methods of this discipline and points out its The method of translation research is mainly affected
research trends. by the way the research object is presented. In the specific
text and cognitive research, it mainly discusses which
translation model is playing a role in these research
1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND OF paths, whether it is a comparative model, a process
COGNITIVE TRANSLATION STUDIES model, or a causal model (Wang Yin, 2012). Among
Cognitive translation studies are derived from cognitive them, cognition is more important in the process model.
science. And cognitive science has benefited from the People can choose different research objects, models and
research results of psycholinguistics and cognitive methods. The methods of translational cognitive research
psychology. The branches of cognitive science closely are mainly borrowed from the branches of cognitive
related to translation studies mainly include psychology, science such as psychology, cognitive psychology, and
especially cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology cognitive linguistics. From the perspective of cognitive
is a branch of psychology, with information processing psychology, the translation process is essentially a process
as the core psychology (Lv Xiaofeng, 2013). This subject of information processing. To understand the information
takes cognition as its research object, and its research goal processing mode adopted by the translator in the
is to explain the information processing process of people translation process, researchers must first understand the
in cognitive activities. The combination of cognitive method of data collection for the experimental research
psychology and translation research produces translation of the psychological process of translation (Yu Gaofeng,
psychology. This interdisciplinary subject focuses on the 2011). Therefore, to conduct a descriptive study of the
role of human cognitive ability in translation. Translation translators’ psychological activity or thinking activity, it is
psychology research aims to discover the translators’ necessary to use cognitive psychology research methods,
observable external behaviors. It can be concluded including audio thinking method, image observation
that cognitive psychology is the theoretical basis of method, computer log monitoring recording method,
translation cognitive research. Cognitive translation screen recording method, retrospective Observation and
studies are gradually established on the theoretical basis empirical methods.
of cognitive research in cognitive psychology (Peng 1.2 The Trend of Cognitive Translation Studies
Lin, 2013). The research objects it focuses on mainly Cognitive translation studies are still at an early stage, and
include information processing strategies for translation,
there are no generally accepted research methods. This
translation capabilities, and translators’ cognitive efforts.
fully reflects the necessity and urgency of the theoretical
The process of translation is essentially a psychological
construction of cognitive translation studies, and also
cognitive process (Wang Yin, 2017). It not only shows
shows that the theoretical research of this discipline has a
the external speech acts and facts of primitive input and
long way to go. The ultimate goal of cognitive translation
translation output, but also reflects the translators’ internal
studies is to construct a universally accepted and practical
psychological mechanism of interlingual conversion and
translation model in order to explain the translation
the cognitive process of speech information processing.
process and its related elements more reasonably (Yu
The cognitive characteristics of translation are mainly
Gaofeng, 2011). The realization of this goal requires the
reflected in three aspects, namely, translation has
researcher of translation theories of cognitive approaches
cognitive dependence, translation is a cognitive behavior,
to conduct integrated research on the basis of drawing
and translation is a cognitive process.
on the research theories and achievements of cognitive
1.1 Content and Methods of Cognitive Translation psychology and other sub-disciplines of cognitive science,
Studies so that the theoretical construction of this discipline will
Cognitive translation researchers believe that the focus of continue to mature.
translation research should be on an objective description Some researchers believe that translation cognitive
of the translation process and a cognitive study of the research methods in the future have the following two
translator’s brain activity (Miao Ju&Zhu Lin, 2011). development trends. One is to combine the experimental
Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture 40
Chen Yi (2020).
Canadian Social Science, 16 (5), 39-43
methods of the natural sciences and the humanities From the perspective of translation studies, these
methods of the social sciences to study translation, so as to studies from the angle of psycholinguistics have their
play the complementary role of quantitative analysis and limitations. But they undoubtedly provide new research
qualitative analysis in the study of translation cognition methods and ideas for process research. Putting
(Zhang Jianwei&Bai Jiehong, 2014). The second is to the research results of adjacent disciplines such as
combine the experimental method and the corpus-based psycholinguistics and neuroscience in translation studies
method to obtain reliable data for cognitive research and exploring their reference significance for the study
on interpretation and translation (Zhang Jianwei&Bai of translation process is an indispensable part of the
Jiehong, 2014). The corpus data is not necessarily cooperation process between translation studies and
completely reliable. So it is necessary to borrow cognitive science.
experimental data such as questionnaire survey, control
experiment and classification comparison to make a more
comprehensive interpretation of the translation topic. Only 2. RELEVANCE THEORY, COGNITIVE
by combining experimental methods with corpus-based CONTEXT AND TRANSLATION
methods can researchers better understand the cognitive
Relevance theory is the theory related to communication
basis.
and cognition proposed by Sperber & Wilish in 1986
1.3 Interdisciplinary Research on Cognitive on the basis of Grice’s conversational meaning theory.
Science and Translation Studies From the perspective of cognitive psychology, relevance
Moser-Mercer’s article takes a neurophysiological theory regards language communication as an explicit-
perspective to study the “neurophysiological connection inference process (Jin Ping, 2013). It is believed that
of interpretation expertise” with a view to discovering the language communication is not a pure coding-decoding
neurophysiological changes that the brain may experience activity, but a cognitive reasoning activity according to
during the acquisition of interpretation expertise (Jin Ping, certain thinking rules. Actually, translation is essentially a
2013). The article not only refers to the relevant results of communicative act of human beings. Translation activities
empirical interpretation process research, but also makes are the process of correctly understanding the original
great use of the research results of neurophysiology for text and creatively reproducing the original information
learning and expertise. The results of the study suggest in another language. According to Gutt’s relevance
that high-intensity training for simultaneous interpretation translation theory, translation is a communicative act
may have long-term effects on the function and structure (Li Guangrong, 2011). But it has its own characteristics
of different regions of the interpreter’s brain. This research and is the communication among the original author,
provides a good example for the translation community the translator and the target reader. Because the
to use the existing cognitive science research literature original author and translator have different cognitive
to further understand the translation process, and it has a environments, the author’s contextual effects will be
demonstrative significance. different from the translator’s contextual effects obtained
Another American psychology professor Diamond from the original textual context. Therefore, the original
and the scholar Shreve’s collaborative research also information cannot be equal to the information conveyed
illustrates the necessity of combining the results of by the translation. The relationship among the original
adjacent cognitive disciplines with translation studies. author, the translator and the target reader determines that
The article, The Neural and Physiological Linkages the translation can only convey the intent of the original
of the Interpretation and Translation Process in the author as much as possible, provide the best relevance to
Brain of Bilinguals, summarizes a series of recent the target reader, and try to make the translation reflect the
studies in the fields of bilingualism and translation, and original intention (Zhang Jianwei&Bai Jiehong, 2014).
comprehensively examines the research results on the Therefore, the translator must first accurately grasp the
relationship between neurology and physiology of oral context of the original text, put himself in the cognitive
translation (Li Guangrong, 2011). The article points out context of the original author to understand it, and then
that with the development of translation process research, correctly present the full meaning and intention of the
new tools such as eye tracking and keyboard input original author. The translator must take full care of the
tracking technology (such as Translog) have gradually cognitive context of the readers of the translation . On this
been applied to a larger scale in the academic world. basis, the translator can carry out language conversion.
However, some other cognitive research methods, such as Because there are certain cultural and social differences
neuroimaging techniques, have not been widely used in between the cognitive context of the target reader and that
translation studies. However, they can provide more direct of the original reader, the translator has the responsibility
physiological and neurological data for the projection to adopt various means to make pragmatic adjustments so
method and position of the translation process in the brain, that the target readers can have the same feelings as the
so it is worthy of attention. original readers (Lei Xiaofeng&Tian Jianguo, 2014).
41 Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture
An Overview of Cognitive Translation Studies
It can be seen that cognitive context affects and tools to discover and verify the translation process, so that
restricts translation. In the translation process, cognitive translation research has crossed many translation barriers
context is an important factor that translators must and embarked on the scientific road. The summary of this
consider first. For example, 三个臭皮匠，顶个诸葛亮, a article shows that the new field of translation cognition
well-known sentence in China. It is very difficult for target research is of great significance to the research methods
readers to understand. First of all, there is no knowledge and theories of the independent discipline of translation
reserve related to Zhuge Liang in the cognitive context of studies. In terms of applications, research in this area
target readers, and it is impossible to find the connection also helps improve the translator’s ability and translation
between Zhuge Liang and the wise man. Furthermore, quality assessment, and enhance people’s understanding
target readers also cannot find the connection between of cognitive skills and the oral and translation skills (Chen
三个臭皮匠 and the wise man. In order to produce Jirong, 2011). Cognitive translation studies will have
contextual effects, the translator needs to provide some better development in the future.
background knowledge and related explanations (Deng
Zhihui, 2011). Please see the translation: Three cobblers
with their wits combined equal Chukeh Liang the master ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
mind. “With their wits combined” and “the master The publishing of this paper benefits from the help of
mind” are added to the translation. Two phrases enable many people. While writing, I have confronted with
the target readers to find the relationship between the problems. However, my helpful teachers, friends and
discourse information and the hypothesis through explicit family members have encouraged me a lot. Therefore, I
and inference, and then obtain a correct understanding. would like to express my sincere thanks to everyone!
Furthermore, in the sentence of “Although the United
States opened the way for the commercial exploitation of
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43 Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture
