A Study of Intersubjectivity in Translation from a Cognitive Perspective
A Study of Intersubjectivity in Translation from a Cognitive Perspective

Summary/Abstract: With the emergence of a “cultural turn” in western translation researches since the 1970s, translators’ subjectivity has been highlighted, and some researchers have also been aware of the existence of intersubjectivity in translation activities; however, the views on the connotation and origin of intersubjectivity in translation are still controversial. This paper attempts to probe into the root causes for the existence of “intersubjectivity in translation” from a cognitive perspective, based on the fundamental “reality-cognition-language” principle in the Embodied Philosophy and cognitive linguistics. According to this principle, “cognition” mediates between “reality” and “language”. Language is formed on the basis of bodily experience and through the processing of human cognitive mechanism. Language is not a self-contained system, but closely related to the external world and human cognition. Furthermore, the author analyzes in depth Prof. Wang Yin’s viewpoint of “weakening phenomena” on “reality-cognition-language”, which sheds light on the study of intersubjectivity in translation. Qualitative research methods (including interviews and translation tests, etc.) have been adopted to collect relevant research data from carefully chosen respondents with different cultural backgrounds and bilingual competence, showing the manifestations of intersubjectivity in translation and the rationality of the kernel “reality-cognition language” principle in cognitive linguistics. In conclusion, fundamentally, it is the “commonness” and “differences” of individual subjects involved in translation activities (including the original author, the translator, the reader of the target text, and the translation initiator, etc.) together with the complicated interrelations among “reality”, “cognition” and “language” that cause intersubjectivity in translation. Intersubjectivity and subjectivity are interdependent, coexisting in the holistic field of translation.

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