A Cognitive Stylistic Analysis of Classical Chinese Poetry Translation

Tan, Yesheng Research in Theoretical Linguisitcs 2008, 2(2).

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A Cognitive Stylistic Analysis of Classical Chinese

Poetry Translation Tan Yesheng

(Shanghai International Studies University, China) . Email: [email protected]; [email protected] Abstract: This paper adopts the theoretical notion of construal elaborated in Langacker’s Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, and conducts a fresh analysis of Chinese poetry translation in terms of construal operations. The paper discusses how different aspects of translation are related to construal: different translation choices, shifts and variations are live manifestations of the dynamic construal operations on the one hand, and these aspects of translation can be characterized in terms of different ways of construal on the other. It points out that the analysis of classical Chinese poems and their translation in terms of traditional syntactic categories is essentially problematic, and based on the construal analysis of several Chinese poems, it proposes that the power of Chinese poetics lie in its potential to be construed in different ways, and its prototypical style can be defined by two construal operations—minimizing perspective construal and maximizing subjectification of image schemas. Then, after reviewing Pound and Yip’s methods of Chinese poetry translation and their theorization, the paper investigates Pound and Yip’s translation practice by means of the two construal operations, and proposes that these two defining features characterize their cognitive styles of translation. Finally it gives a brief explanation of the transplanting effect of Chinese poetry translation in terms of the status of construal in the interaction between language and cognition. Key words: construal; Chinese poetics; cognitive stylistics; the transplanting effect

Introduction

This study of translation falls within cognitive stylistics, which “combines the kind of explicit, rigorous and detailed linguistic analysis of literary texts…with a systematic and theoretically informed consideration of cognitive structures and processes that underlie the production and reception of language”. (Semino and Culpeper, 2002, Foreword). What is new about cognitive stylistics is the way in which linguistic analysis is systematically based on theories that relate linguistic choices to cognitive structures and processes (ibid). A cognitive stylistic analysis of translation intends to provide, via cognitive structures and processes involved in translation, more systematic and explicit accounts of the relationship between a source language text (SLT) on the one side, and different target language texts (TLTs), i.e. different translators’ responses and interpretations on the other.

This paper conducts a cognitive stylistic analysis of Chinese poetry1

1 In this paper, when referring to Chinese poetry/poems, we all mean typical classical Chinese poetry/poems.

translation in terms of construal operations. In the first section, it gives a critical review of the analysis of Chinese poems and their translation in terms of traditional syntactic categories, and points out that the analysis of classical Chinese poems and their translation in terms of traditional syntactic categories is essentially problematic. In the second section, based on the construal analysis of several Chinese poems, it proposes that the power of Chinese poetics lie in its potential to be construed in different

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ways. Then, in the third section, after reviewing Pound and Yip’s methods of Chinese poetry translation and their theorization, the paper investigates Pound and Yip’s translation practice by means of construal operations, and proposes that their cognitive styles of translation can be defined in terms of two construal operations—minimizing perspective construal and maximizing subjectification of image schemas. Finally it gives a brief explanation of the transplanting effect of Chinese poetry translation in terms of the status of construal in the interaction between language and cognition. 1. A Critical Review on the Syntactic Analysis of Classical Chinese Poetry and its Translation

There is an argument that attributes the Chinese poetic style to the syntactic conventions of Chinese language. Accordingly, there is also a kind of criticisms of Chinese poetry translation based upon syntactic features. Take Yang Lian’s （2003）analysis of Du Fu’s Poem Climbing (登高) and two of its translations as an example. (Available at http://lorenwebster.net/In_a_Dark Time/archives/000425.html).

1) Version 12

2 In our analysis, we regard the segmentation of SLT or the translation unit constructing procedure, which is essential to the

comprehension stage of translation, as an integral part of the whole translation process, and in this and other examples, by unconventionally putting the version mark”1, 2, 3…” before the SLT, we try to vividly show that the comprehension stage and the production stage are actually a unified whole.

:

登高 ——杜甫

A Long Climb by Du Fu (Tang Dynasty) tr. by Witter Bynner

(风急天高猿啸哀)1，

(In a sharp gale from the wide sky apes are whimpering)1,

(渚清沙白鸟飞回)2。

(Birds are flying homeward over the clear lake and white sand)2.

(无边落木萧萧下)3，

(Leaves are dropping down like the spray of a waterfall)3,

(不尽长江滚滚来)4。

(While I watch the long river always rolling on)4. Version 2:

登高

The Heights—tr. by B. Fletcher

((风急)a(天高)b 猿啸哀)1

((The wind so fresh)a, (the sky so high)b Awake the gibbons wailing cry)1.

((渚清)a(沙白)b 鸟飞回)2


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((The isles clear-cut)a, (the sand so white)b, Arrest the wheeling sea-gulls' flight.)2

((无边)a 落木(萧萧)b 下)3

((Through endless space)a (with rustling sound)b The falling leaves are whirled around.)3

(不尽长江滚滚来)4

（Beyond my ken a yeasty sea The Yangtze's waves are rolling free）4.

This is Yang’s review of the poem： “Chinese phrases are often devoid of an obvious subject/personal pronoun. Thus both Du Fu

and Yang Lian could climb the terrace. Chinese verbs have no tenses, therefore the monkeys could wail during both the Tang Dynasty and today. Chinese readers often have to add a prepositional phrase between images to create a linguistic link. There are no fixed relationships between the images - they continue one by one and level by level, until the portable universe focuses finally on a stained wine cup, held by a certain poet at a certain moment. The depth of this poetic is this open situation - the climbing includes all climbers. During that moment, space within the poem is created, and time is canceled. We are sent into an eternal exile.”

When conducting the structural analysis of the Chinese poem and its translation, he puts much emphasis on the syntactic features (represented by the bold and italicized letters in the quotation) of the Chinese language, and they are projected directly to the special poetic effects.

Many literary reviewers and writers have confirmed the influence of a set of linguistic features associated with the Imagist movement, and, more specifically, those particular features introduced by Ezra Pound and resulting from his experiences in translating classical Chinese poetry. (Adamson, p589) Davie (1965) pronounced boldly that later-20th-century poetry “has adapted itself to the Chinese written language and in other words, through one of the many related literary movements that made up Modernism, a language entirely foreign to English has had a lasting effect on the poetry of our time”. (Quoted from Picard, 2003) Zach Picard (2003) also suggests that “a particular set of ideas about the Chinese written characters, put forth by the late-Victorian scholar Ernest Fenollosa, together with certain syntactical strategies that came out of Ezra Pound’s experiences in translating Chinese poetry, had a profound influence on both the language and the structure of Imagist poetry and, subsequently, on a much wider range of literary production".

Here we would argue that the fact that the theorization of some of the Chinese linguistic features had a great influence on the western literary movement is one matter, while whether the theorization is all right, linguistically speaking, is another. The argument, which relates the Chinese poetic style directly to the syntactic features of Chinese poems, is essentially problematic.

Projecting syntactic features directly to aesthetic experiences is quite arbitrary; upon which there are no systematic standards telling us how these features are related to the poetic style. We may have a list of questions to ask regarding Yang’s comment: Are the effects brought out in the poem uniquely related to the language features? Can’t we empathize with Du Fu with a personal pronoun, “I” for instance, being added? Can’t the monkeys wail during both the Tang Dynasty and today if we add tenses to the verbs like in the English versions? Should Chinese readers often have to add a prepositional phrase between images to create a linguistic link, and is it possible for other


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grammatical categories to be used? In the second version, verbs are used to link the different images.

This kind of analysis in terms of traditional syntactic categories cannot help us to reach a sound argument concerning the special role of Chinese language in constructing Chinese poetics. There is no definite relationship between the use of certain syntactic categories and certain poetic effects. A deeper and more serious problem with such an approach is that for such a contextual grammar as classical Chinese grammar that depends a lot on context, it is always far-fetched to fill gaps with grammatical categories derived from word for word translation into English language or any other language. And either belittling or beautifying the features of a language via this method would be accused of ethnocentrism by recent cultural linguists. We need a proper mechanism that is flexible enough to account for gap-filling mental operations. In this paper we will explore further on this issue from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. 2. Construal and Different Aspects of Translation 2.1 The Theoretical Notion of Construal and Its Various Dimensions

Construal is a very important theoretical notion in Cognitive Grammar. It is the way in which a language user mentally shapes and structures the semantic content of an expression, which at the same time imposes a frame upon the described scene or situation. (Langacker,1987: 487-488; 1999:206)

Langacker adopts different terms to elaborate on “construal”, including “image”, “mental imagery”, “image transformations”, “focal adjustments” and “mental transfer”, describing its relatively static and dynamic aspects.

He says that our conception of the appearance of an object involves a family of different images together with a grasp of the transformations relating one image to another. In construing a situation for linguistic purposes, the speaker is able to conceptualize how it would appear from different vantage points and to portray it accordingly, irrespective of his actual vantage point (1991:140). Our cognitive capacity for image transformations3

Toury (1995/2001: 80) states the nature of comparative analysis as follows:

, that is, our ability to construe a conceived situation in alternate ways—by means of alternate images, can help a speaker to conceptualize and express the world in certain manners to serve certain communicative purposes, and it can also help an information receiver to reconstruct the scene intended by a language producer based on his expression (Langacker, 1987, Vol. I: 99).

According to Langacker (1987), meanings are not inherent properties of linguistic expressions, but are “construed” on-line on occasions of actual use in context. Both the linguistic elements comprising utterances and the way of construing the content are important components of the input to processes of construing meanings. As Langacker demonstrates in his works, various dimensions of construal can characterize a linguistic event, and we assume that they can also serve as qualified intermediary concepts of comparative analysis.

1). Every comparison is partial only: it is not really performed on the objects as such, only certain aspects thereof; 2). Comparison is also indirect in its very essence; it can proceed only by means of some intermediary concepts, which should be relatable to the compared aspect(s) of both texts. 3). These intermediary concepts should also be relatable to the theory in whose terms the comparison would be performed.

The first and second characteristics of comparative analysis tell us that we need to determine the

3 Langacker sometimes refers to image transformations as focal adjustment or mental transfer.


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basis of comparison first. We have to first make sure that we are comparing like with like, which means that the two (or more) entities to be compared, while differing in some respect, must share certain attributes. There have to be some aspects to be compared and the intermediary concepts serve as the background for comparison. In other words, the intermediary concepts must be neutral.

According to Langacker (1987, 1991, 1999), we have various cognitive abilities that are applicable to any domain of experience and essential to the emergence of specific concepts, such as abstraction (schematisation), attention directing or focusing, and figure/ground organization. They all constitute different types of construal in linguistic expression and interpretation. There are many other construal operations that have been identified by cognitive linguists, and by other linguists who take a conceptualist approach to linguistic semantics4. Croft & Cruse (2004, 3-5) recapitulates the different construal operations under four headings, namely, I. Attention/Salience; II. Judgement/Comparison; III. Perspective/ Situatedness; IV. Constitution/Gestalt. In fact, the four headings denote four basic cognitive abilities. In this way he proposes that various construal operations be manifestations of basic cognitive abilities in different aspects of experience. The universality of the underlying cognitive abilities enables the dimensions or ways of construal to be neutral5

as to different languages or cultures, and thus qualifies them as intermediary concepts for comparative linguistic analysis in general or for translation study in specific.

According to Langacker, two images of the same situation may differ in five general dimensions of construal, i.e. the level of specificity, scale/scope (cf. Croft & Cruse, I. Attention/Salience), background assumption, perspective (vantage point, mental scanning, etc.)( cf. Croft & Cruse, III) and prominence (cf. Croft & Cruse, I) (Langacker 1987: 110-150; 1999: 2-8, 45-71). And there are other ways of construal mainly developed and elaborated by Lakoff and Johnson (Lakoff 1987:453, Johnson 1987:29), Talmy(2001) and other cognitive linguists, such as image schema (cf. Croft & Cruse, IV), metonymy and metaphor (cf. Croft & Cruse, II). Next, we will focus on their dynamics in translation process, examining closely translational choices, shifts and variations in terms of different dimensions or ways of construal. We will see what some dimensions or ways of construal are like and what translation-induced image transformations may occur, along either one dimension or different dimensions of contrual.

2.2 Construal Operations and Different Aspects of Translation Langacker (1987: p138-139) states, “constructing a proper expression for a scene may involve

transformations among alternate ways of construal, transformation of one construal to another, and possibly a series of such transformations. The resulted expressions are often functionally equivalent but nonetheless different in meaning by virtue of the contrasting images they convey”. This statement referring to the dynamic cognitive linguistic processes in intralingual communication is quite enlightening for translation, which is a matter of functional equivalence according to modern translation theories. Actually, similar types of processes occur in translation as cross-lingual/cultural communication.

According to Langacker (1987, Croft & Cruse, 2004), construal processes are subject to a wide range of constraints, deriving, in the main, from conventions, context and the nature of the human

4 To be noted, cognitive linguists have discrepancies in classifying construals. For example, in Langacker’s classification, mental

scanning is categorized as one type of perspectival construal while in Croft’s, it is one kind of attention/salience construal. 5 To be viewed as general types of dynamic construal operations, but not as specific construals of a certain scene/situation, which have to

be tailored to linguistic conventions.


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cognitive system. With different linguistic conventions, different contextual, cultural and cognitive substrates, and other indefinite factors involved, construal shifts, and therefore image transformations, are very likely to occur in a cross-lingual/cultural communication. Differences in linguistic conventions may undermine the possibility to preserve the construals of an SLT, due to the way construal is tailored to the conventionality of linguistic units or construction schemas. As Lederer (1976) proposes, translational shifts are due to the fact that the same notion or situation is generally conceptualized (construed) differently in two different languages, and the linguistic expressions retained in the two different languages are consequently not the same. Therefore, construal shifts or image transformations in translation can be motivated in some cases by the need of tailoring to the different linguistic conventions.

In the process of translation, the translator may trace the process of conceptualization guided by an expression at first, but while meeting a different TL langua-cultural convention, and a different situation, he may realign the construals or transform the images associated with the former conceptualization, to guarantee optimal relevance6

2.3 Translational Choices, Shifts and Variations in Terms of Perspective Construal

In this section, we will conduct a comparative analysis of a famous Chinese poem “Tian Jing Sha”, and its three TLTs (The English versions are quoted from Huang Guowen, 2003). With “construal” as intermediary concept, we will try to reveal translational shifts between SLT and TLT(s), variations across different translations where they are available, and therefore different choices of different translators.

2) Version 1:

[天净沙]·秋思

（元马致远）

Autumn

by Ma Zhiyuan, tr. by Weng Xianliang (翁显良)

(枯藤老树昏鸦)1，

（Crows hovering over rugged trees wreathed with rotten vine-- the day is about done）1.

(小桥流水人家)2，

（Yonder is a tiny bridge over a sparkling stream, and on the far bank, a pretty little village）2.

. The fact that the same experience can be construed in different ways makes translational shifts accountable, for one experience in a scene expressed in SL can also be expressed with another way of construal in another language without changing the content of thought. And conversely, the translational shifts, choices and variations between a SLT and its TLTs can be characterized in terms of the image transformations or construal shifts.

6 Relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1995) holds that a successful communication is guaranteed if and only if the communicative act

is consistent with the relevance principle, suggested by presumption of optimal relevance: it should give the audience an adequate amount of contextual effects, without causing it to spend unnecessary effort.


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(古道西风瘦马，夕阳西下，断肠人在天涯)3。

（But the traveler has to go on down this ancient road, the west wind moaning, his bony horse groaning, trudging towards the sinking sun, farther and farther away from home）3.

Version 2:

[天净沙]·秋思

（元马致远）

Tune: Tian Jin Sha by Ma Zhiyuan, tr. by Ding Zuxin & Burton Raffel

(枯藤老树)1 (昏鸦)2，

(Withered vines hanging on old branches)1, (Returning crows croaking at dusk)2.

(小桥流水人家)3，

(A few houses hidden past a narrow bridge, And below the bridge quiet creek running)3.

(古道西风瘦马)4，

(Down a worn path, in the west wind, A lean horse comes plodding)4.

(夕阳西下)5，(断肠人在天涯)6。

(The sun dips down in the west)5, (And the lovesick traveler is still at the end of the world)6. Version 3:

[天净沙]·秋思

（马致远）

Tune to "Sand and Sky': Autumn Thoughts by Ma Zhiyuan, tr. by Schlepp

(枯藤)1(老树)2 (昏鸦)3，

(Dry vine)1, (old tree)2, (crows at dusk)3,

(小桥)4(流水)5(人家)6，

(Low bridge)4, (stream running)5, (cottages)6,

(古道)7(西风)8(瘦马)9，

(Ancient road)7, (west wind)8, (lean nag)9:


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(夕阳西下)10，(断肠人在天涯)11。

(The sun westering)10. (And one with breaking heart at the sky's edge)11. We align each of the three TLTs with a segmented allo-text of the SLT7. The segments of the

allo-texts establish problem-solution relations with, and therefore form coupled pairs8

The term perspective subsumes a number of different factors

with the corresponding segments of the three TLTs respectively. As clearly reflected in the distribution patterns of segmentation, the three TLTs establish quite different relationships with the SLT. Prominently, TLT3 breaks down into the lowest level of linguistic units among the three, and establishes phrase-for-phrase coupled pairs with the SLT. In contrast, TLT1 breaks down into the highest level of linguistic units among the three—at the sentence level. In the following part, we will examine how the three TLTs differ in relation to the SLT in terms of perspective construal.

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Version

, including the vantage point, foreground/ background organization, mental scanning, empathy construal, etc.

Vantage point is the position from which a scene is viewed. Language use always implies a kind of vantage point. A particular choice of vantage point imposes on the scene an alignment into foreground and background, where the foreground is typically more prominent and easily perceived.

In TLT1, segment 1 and segment 2 both align the three entities involved in the scenario in a foreground and background relationship, and set up a vantage point respectively (with “rugged trees” in segment 1, and “stream” in segment 2). Segment 3 aligns the four entities (“Ancient road”, “west wind”, “lean nag” and “the sun”) and one human act in a foreground and background relationship, putting the person on the vantage point, thus making the person a foregrounded part, and leaving the four entities in the background.

Pattern of construal for version 1

Vantage point Foreground Background

Seg(ment) 1 rugged trees crows Vine

Seg. 2 stream bridge//village bank of the stream

Seg 3 traveler traveler ancient road, west

wind, bony horse,

sinking sun

TLT2 has more segments and has quite different construal patterns from TLT1. Different from

TLT1, TLT2 aligns the two entities (“枯藤” and “老树”) of segment 1 in a foreground vs

background relationship, and renders the third entity(昏鸦) separately in segment 2. In segment 3,

in contrast with TLT1, it puts “bridge” （“小桥”）rather than “stream”/ “creek”（“流水”）on the vantage

point. Also different from TLT1, instead of rendering the three entities in segment 4 as the 7 The same way as the allophones or allomorphs are the specific tokens of the relatively more abstract phoneme or morpheme, an

allo-text is a realized token of the SLT. 8 As Gideon Toury (1995/2001, p88-98) states, mapping each assumed translation onto its assumed source would assign the status of

outright translation solutions to various constituents of the target text. The determination of the members of a coupled pair is mutual or concurrent. The analyst will go about establishing a segment of the target text “for which it would be possible to claim that--beyond its boundaries -- there are no leftovers of the solution to a translation problem which is represented by one of the source text's segments--whether similar or different in rank and scope”. (Toury, 1995/2001: 79) The “no-leftover” constraint or maxim is based upon concurrent comparative analysis between the assumed SLT problems and assumed TLT solutions.

9 Please refer to Langacker (1987, 1991) and (1999) for detailed illustrations.


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background of the human act, it aligns the three entities in a foreground vs background relationship, with the “lean horse”（“瘦马”）as the foreground, leaving the other two entities in the background. In TLT2, “the sun” is foregrounded in segment 5, as another difference from TLT 1.

Pattern of construal for version 2

Version 2 Vantage point Foreground Background

Seg. 1 vine Branches

Seg. 2 crows dusk

Seg 3 bridge creek Houses

Seg. 4 lean horse worn path, west wind

Seg.5 the sun in the west

Seg. 6 traveler the end of the world

In sharp contrast to both TLT 1 and TLT 2, TLT 3 does not align the entities in relation to any vantage point, in other words, leaving the vantage point implicit, and doesn’t enforce any perspective construal upon all the entities mentioned above.

The alternate construals of the scene enforced by the three TLTs reveal the translators’ different understandings of the same poem. In a sense, the SLT only provides a mental model that could be construed in different ways, and different translational choices, variations and shifts are live manifestations of the dynamic construal operations that Langacker postulates

2.4 Image Schemas and Image Schematic Transformations in Translation

In this section we will discuss another way of construal that the translation of Chinese poems frequently involves—image schematic construal.

Image schemas are not specific images, but represent schematic patterns arising from imagistic domains, such as CONTAINERS, PATHS, LINKS, FORCES, BALANCE, etc. They recur in a variety of embodied domains, and structure our bodily experiences. Here is an inventory of image schemas drawn from Johnson (1987) and Lakoff & Turner (1989), which is reclassified by Croft & Cruse (2004):

SPACE UP-DOWN, FRONT-BACK, LEFT-RIGHT, NEAR-FAR, CENTER-PERIPHERY, CONTACT

SCALE PATH

CONTAINER CONTAINMENT, IN-OUT, SURFACE, FULL-EMPTY, CONTENT

FORCE BALANCE, COUNTERFORCE, COMPULSION, RESTRAINT, ENABLEMENT,

BLOCKAGE, DIVERSION, ATTRACTION

UNITY/ MULTIPLICITY MERGING, COLLECTION, SPLITTING, ITERATION, PART-WHOLE,

MASS-COUNT, LINK

IDENTITY MATCHING, SUPERIMPOSITION

EXISTENCE REMOVAL, BOUNDED SPACE, CYCLE, OBJECT, PROCESS

Image schemas are construals of experience, which organize cultural experience into structured wholes, called image schematic models by Lakoff (1987:68). In this section, we view them as dynamic image schematic construal processes, dwelling on how different translations enforce different image schematic construals on a scene evoked by an SLT.

In the following examples, the SLTs subjectify10

10 “Subjectify” will be illustrated below, and here roughly means “leaving ……unpredicated”.

the relations between different images or


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different components of images in the respective scenes, while the English versions have to objectify11

3) 到了济南府，进得城来/，家家泉水/，户户垂杨

the relations as required by the target language convention. When they render the relations explicit, different image schemas or sub-schemas are utilized depending on the translators’ choices. In other words, they enforce different image schematic construals or construal configurations on the same scene which is assumed to be evoked by the SLTs.

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11 “Objectify” is the opposite process of “subjectify”. 12 Example 3)and 4) are not poetic lines but poetic.

。

——刘鹗《老残游记》，第二回

Word-by-word gloss: reached Tsinan/, entered the city/, every house flowing streams / every door willow trees /

TLT: When he reached Tsinan and entered the city/, there were flowing streams by every house/ and willow trees by every door/, which delighted him even more than “the scenery of the south”. --Tr. Yang Xianyi& G. M. Taylor ~ Mr. Decadent, Chap.2

The SLT subjectifies the relationship between the images “the flowing streams” and “every house”, and also that between the images “willow trees” and “every door. Our encyclopedic knowledge tells us that the relationships are spatial ones. Therefore, we should use SPACE schema to construe the implicit relationships. With the two instances of the preposition“ by”, the TLT uses the more specific sub-schemas FRONT-BACK and NEAR-FAR to construe them.

4) 一路/ 秋山/ 红叶/，老圃/ 黄花/，颇不寂寞。

Word-by-word gloss: One road / autumn hill/ red leaves/, old garden/ yellow leaves/, quite not lonely.

TLT1: On the road he saw red leaves on the autumn hills and chrysanthemums in old gardens, so that he was not bored.

-- Tr. Yang Xian-yi (杨宪益) & G. M. Taylor~Mr. Decadent, Chapter 2.

TLT2: The road was among autumn hills covered with red leaves and gardens full of chrysanthemums so that he did not feel all lonely.

-- Tr. by Harold Shadick ~ The Travels of Lao Ts'an, p13. In the Chinese SLT, there are no relations predicated between these images: One road / autumn

hill/ red leaves/, old garden/ yellow leaves. TLT 1 construes the spatial relationships with the SPACE sub-schema—CONTACT and the CONTAINER sub-schema—IN-OUT, as predicated by “on” and “in” respectively. In contrast, TLT2 construes the relations with the UNITY/ MULTIPLICITY sub-schemas — MERGING, PART-WHOLE, LINK, the SPACE sub-schemas—UP-DOWN and CONTACT, and also the CONTAINER sub-schemas—CONTAINMENT, FULL-EMPTY and CONTENT, as predicated by “among”, “covered with” and “full of” respectively.

5) 葡萄美酒/夜光杯。——王翰：《凉州词》

Word-by-word gloss: Grape-wine/ Luminous jade cup TLT: Sweet grape-wine filled in a cup of luminous jade.


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--Tr. Teresa Li ~ 50 Poems from the Chinese. In this example, the TLT construes the relationship between the relevant components of the

image using the encyclopedically evoked CONTAINER sub-schemas—“CONTAINMENT” “FULL-EMPTY” and “CONTENT”, as predicated by “filled in”.

6)梧桐更兼细雨。——李易安：《声声慢》

Word-by-word gloss: catalpa and fine-spun rain TLT1: Catalpa leaves are rustling with the misty rain. --Tr. Candlin~ The Herald Wind TLT2: The paulownia trees are veiled behind the fine-spun rain. – Tr. Teresa Li ~ 50 Poems from the Chinese

In this example, the two TLTs construe the implicit relations between the imagistic components, interestingly, in a quite different way. TLT 1 construes the relationship with the SPACE sub-schema—CONTACT, as predicated by “rustling with”; while in TLT 2, the SPACE sub-schema—FRONT-BACK is used, as predicated by “veiled behind”.

Examining the four examples above, we find that the SLTs predicate the images or imagistic components quite similarly, all juxtaposing the images with their relations left implicit, while the TLTs use different image schemas or sub-schemas to construe the relations. And there may be different TLTs of an SLT, which enforce different construals on the same scene with the different image schemas or sub-schemas. The image schematic construals help the translators to establish the linguistic frames or cues to evoke certain intended images from TLT readers.

According to relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1986:222, quoted from Gutt, 1996), poetic effects amount to the peculiar effects of an utterance, which achieves most of its relevance through a wide array of weak implicatures. In schema theory (Cook, 1994/1999; Jang, 2000), the power of poem lies in its openness to different interpretations, and such interpretations may be produced from different initial schematic assumptions. Here in the above examples, we can see no strong or weak implicatures, and initial assumptions seem to be unnecessary or irrelevant, as it’s a conventional style to juxtapose “images”13

In the conceptualization process leading to a certain expression, the conceptualizer may have different potential choices to align the images or imagistic components, and he chooses one appropriate alignment according to the proper discourse scenario. In the translation process, a translator needs to select among different equivalent choices for an SLT. That is to say, he may enforce different construals on the mental models provided by the SLT and then select the most appropriate choice for his translation. According to Olohan (2000), the concept of imagery—defined as the construal of scenes in different ways may assist in the explanation of translation problems at both the comprehension stage and the production stage. It may cause comprehension problems in cases where the SLT construals are quite unexpected or rather unusual. While regarding the generation of a translation, the choice of a specific translation equivalent, represents a choice, not merely between different linguistic representations but between different

in classical Chinese poetry. What we can see is that the poetic effects of the Chinese poems are clearly manifested by the different ways of contrual enforced by the translation varieties, and their poetic power lies in the implicit construal possibilities or alternatives.

13 This is Pound’s description and we will discuss it in details below.


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construals of conceptual content. On the basis of a Think Aloud-Protocol (TAP) survey, Olohan(2000) claims that domain conceptualization and the awareness of different construal choices in the process of translation are closely related to trainee translators’ competence. Here I would argue that not necessarily reflecting their general translation competence, translators may vary in terms of their perceived need to attempt to maintain or to alter the source-language construal when producing the target text. Therefore translation varieties of the same SLT may embody different ways of construal, and hence different cognitive styles., style is a system of choices within language use (Leech and Short,1981) and cognitive style refers to a language user’s cognitive structures and processes that underlie systematic linguistic choices or patterns in a text or discourse, here in this case referring to construal patterns.

Next, with the preliminary generalization we get from the construal analysis as a background, we will come back to the imagist movement with Pound as the leading exponent, investigating how the features of the classical Chinese poetry are theorized by Pound and Yip, and how in terms of construal we could give a more systematic, explicit and proper account of the relations between the Chinese Language, Chinese poetics and their cognitive styles of translation. 3. A Construal Configuration of Chinese Poetics and Pound and Yip’s Cognitive Styles of Chinese Poetry Translation 3.1 Pound’s Aesthetics of Chinese Poetry Translation Ezra Pound had experienced differently in different stages of working with classical Chinese poetry. He spoke no Chinese and his understanding of Chinese mainly came from his work with Fenollosa’s cribs. As he did more and more translation work, he knew more and more about Chinese, and at the same time, changed his translation methods based on what he learned as the characteristics or special features of the Chinese language. ( Picard , 2003)

At first, Pound only detected the superficial syntactical features and considered the most striking characteristics of the Chinese written language to be its flexibility as to parts of speech and contextual dependence—the function of a character can only be determined by its positions in a sentence, and its significance is defined by the context. Besides, Pound also found that Chinese tended to eschew “personal pronouns and connectives”. Based on these characteristics of the Chinese language, Pound drew his first two tenets of Imagism, i.e. “Direct treatment of the ‘thing’ whether subjective or objective” and the use of “absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation” (Literary 3). And his English translation is characterized as “linguistic imperatives”(Actually they are not in imperative mood, but they look like imperatives). For example, the first of Pound’s Cantos, written in 1917, starts as follows:

7) And then went down to the ship, Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea. (Cantos 3)

Pound assumed that he had achieved the similar poetic effect as Chinese poems by using the “linguistic imperatives”. Here is Zach Picard’s description (2003):

The lack of a pronoun in the first line starts the poem with a lurch, and the lack of either conjunction or pronoun in the second line leaves the reader equally uncertain: is “forth on the godly sea” an adjectival phrase14

14 This is an adverbial phrase, rather than an adjectival phrase. This is Picard’s mistake

modifying “set” and roughly equal to “to breakers”? Or is it an independent clause with pronoun and verb elided? And should there not be a few more articles as well? The reader is most likely to reconstruct the first lines as:


13

And then we went down to the ship, Set the keel to the breakers, and sailed forth on the godly sea. And here is Picard’s (2003) further comment: “The elisions may be Chinese in origin, but the effect is not particularly Chinese; instead,

this is a new, lean English, the challenges of which are familiar to any student of Modern poetry”. We should note here that Picard’s descriptions and comments are all syntax centered. For him,

and for Pound similarly, the elisions done by Pound are syntactic ones15

MAN SEES HORSE

, and the uncertainty Pound achieved is actually syntactic uncertainty. To a certain degree, they vulgarize the aesthetic effect of the poem and remind us of some broken ways of English speaking, or children’s chatters. We cannot agree with Picard for the essential weaknesses of the argument, which we have discussed above.

Later, Pound established his ideogrammic method based on his understanding of Chinese ideographs. Pound assumed that Chinese written language was essentially ideographic and non-phonetic in nature, and that the characters were constructed on the principle of mimesis. As opposed to the abstraction of a phonetic language, he argued, “in reading Chinese we do not seem to be juggling mental counters, but to be watching things work out their own fate” (Picard, 2003). For example,

人見馬

Unlike its English equivalent, the three Chinese characters are not based on “arbitrary symbols” but “a vivid shorthand picture of the operations of nature”: the first character stands the

man on his two legs; the bold figure 見 represents running legs under an eye, with a modified

picture of an eye and a modified picture of running legs; and the third one stands the horse on his four legs (Picard, 2003) . With this description, Pound was referring to the pictorial metaphors that Chinese ancestors built into the structures of the language. And he revitalized the thought as the basic method of syntactic construction—ideogrammic method; making it compatible with the conclusions he had drawn from the syntactic elisions.

Pound derived the ideogrammic method from his understanding of Chinese characters. He theorized it as one aesthetic principle of imagism, and applied it to his literary creations and his poetry translation. He wanted to bring out “some fundamental relation between” things, engendering a progression of centered images in a sequence, or pattern, of human thought and emotion. Hence his famous Imagist poem “In a station of the metro” (Personae, 109):

9) The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.

In this poem, the connecting thoughts between the images are implicit, leaving them to be constructed by the readers.

One problem with Pound’s theorization for the ideogrammic method is that he assumes a Chinese person does not experience the Chinese written language in the same way that an English speaker experiences the English written language. As Cai Zongqi (1993) points out, the original metaphors that Chinese ancestors built into structures of language have been lost and “the Chinese respond to their modern printed characters as abstract linguistic signs in the same way that

15 Also bold and italicized in the quotation.


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Westerners read their non-character equivalents in Western languages” (174-175). One century after Pound’s imagist movement, Wai-lim Yip develops an aesthetic principle on

Chinese poetry translation, which echoes Pound.

3.2 Wai-lim Yip’s Translational Aesthetics: Non-Interference Principle Wai-lim Yip, as a poet, a brilliant translator and theorist, also emphasizes the specialty of

Chinese language in constructing Chinese poetics. This has greatly influenced his aesthetic view and leads to his strategies in translating Chinese poetry. As he argues, related to the special feature of Chinese language is the free space allowed for images. Though with many differences between them16, Yip is similar to Pound in focusing on the images17 Chinese poetry present. Echoing Pound, he claims that Chinese poetry is characterized by juxtaposition of images, and that the relationships between these images are more expressive for being left unsaid, and that when they are spelt out by insertion of prepositions, conjunctions and pronouns, the productive ambiguity of these relationships is lost18

Here he is projecting the principle of Chinese Taoism “Wu Wei” to grammatical structures

. Yip resorts to the ancient Chinese ideology to support his theory of classical Chinese poetics

and his non-interference method of translation. He says: "Underlying the classical Chinese aesthetic is the primary idea of noninterference with

Nature's flow [cf. the Taoist 'Wu Wei']. As reflected in poetic language, this idea has engendered freedom from the syntactical rigidities often found in English…This opens up an indeterminate space for readers to enter and reenter for multiple perceptions rather than locking them into some definite perspectival position or guiding them in a certain direction" (Yip, 1997, page xiii).

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Juxtaposition of images, which is the central notion of Pound and Yip’s translational poetics, comes from different sources in the two persons’ minds. For Pound, it derives from the principle of ideogrammic organization of Chinese characters, while for Yip it is a natural development from a philosophical principle of Taoism. From a cognitive linguistic point of view, these arguments both involve metaphor(the mapping between two cognitive domains)—pictorial metaphor and grammatical metaphor respectively. Out of subjective aesthetic sensibilities, they feel the cognitive nature of their methods—Pound’s ideogrammic method and his arguments concerning “leaving fundamental relations between images implicit”, and Yip’s “non-interference principle” and his

. Thus Yip concludes that the Chinese poetics was deeply rooted in Chinese langua-culture, and the western translations that had read into it invalid Western assumptions grossly misrepresent the Chinese mind. Much of his effort is spent on the translation of Chinese poetry with the non-interference method.

16 Yip and Pound both established their poetics upon their understandings of the language features of Chinese poetry. However, Yip aims

at a translational aesthetics, serving his translation activity which in his eyes functions as the dialogue between cultures. Pound established his poetic method through his experience of Chinese poetry via another person, and his translation served more as means to the end than gained the value itself. (Picard, 2003)

17 Here the “image” should be distinguished from Langacker’s image. The sense of image in Cognitive Grammar is not limited to sensory images, but covers all the occurrence of a cognitive event in the absence of external stimulation. His conception of images refer both to the mental representations that are conceptual analogs of our direct and indirect peripheral experiences and indirect conceptual analogs of our environment, “broadly construed to include society, natural phenomena, our own bodies and their organic (and mental process), and the rest of what is often called reality or the world out there.” (Palmer, 1996: 46-47) Langacker (1987, 1999) emphasizes the role of mental imagery in constructing semantic structures, in describing our ability to construe a conceived situation in alternate ways----by means of alternate images--for purposes of thought or communication. With “image” Pound and Yip mainly refer to the one-shot concrete sensory images or metaphorical images that are related to poetic effects.

18 Yip also characterizes the poetic style with traditional syntactic categories. 19 As Yip points out, also closely related to the “non-interference” principle in grammatical structure is the ancient belief that “language can not fully express what one intends”. (“言不尽意”)


15

arguments concerning “perspectival position” (bold and italicized in the quotation above) are all cognitively based, but they do not render the relation between language and cognition correctly. As we argue above, the assumption about ideographs, the characterization in terms of traditional syntactic categories and the projection of them directly to aesthetic experience are all problematic. Then what are the linguistic features that characterize the “juxtaposition of images”? Besides, these questions remain unresolved: Regarding the great difference in linguistic conventions between the Chinese and English languages, what difficulties and pressures do they suffer to maintain the style that they believe derives from the convention of the Chinese language? What are the bases upon which Pound could “invent” the method in English poems, and Pound and Yip could transplant the image compositions from Chinese to English? To answer these questions we will again refer to the theoretical notion of construal and the different construal operations concerned.

3.3 The Cognitive Styles of Pound and Yip’s Translation

Based on our analysis of the Chinese poems in Section 2, we argue that the cognitive power of the poems lies in their potential to be construed in different ways. Here we would venture to propose two defining features of Chinese poetics in terms of construal.

Our analysis of the poem Tian Jing Sha, a very typical Classical Chinese poem leads us to a preliminary idea of Chinese poetics in terms of perspective construal, that is, the implicitness of perspective construal alternatives. We venture to say that minimizing20

As what Pound and Yip did is to transplant the poetic style to the new langua-culture, it would be a natural extrapolation that the two defining features of Chinese poetics are also those that define their cognitive styles of Chinese poetry translation. We will examine Pound and Yip’s translation practice to see if they could match, and if they do, the defining function of the two

perspective construal is one important defining feature of the cognitive style of Classical Chinese poems, and the other, as we could find with the image schematic construal analysis above, is maximizing subjectification of image schemas.

Subjectification refers to the subjectification of ground elements (Langacker, 1990). Langacker (1987:126) uses “ground” to indicate a speech event, its participants and its setting. The elements of the ground such as the time and space of the speech event, and the relation of the conceptualizer to the participants of the events are all subject to different construals. Ground elements are left implicit or subjectified when these things can be readily inferred on the receivers’ part.

As a contextual grammar, classical Chinese grammar depends a lot on the conceptualizer’s ground, and involves a high level of subjectification, and then it would be natural for classical Chinese poems to commonly involve subjectification. If less information of the ground is provided, as default or encyclopedic knowledge allows, there will be more subjective involvement in meaning construction, and more work on the part of the receiver, and hence more poetic effects. Thus we venture to say that maximizing subjectification of image schemas is another defining feature. The two features are compatible, as the minimization of perspective construal all the time implies the subjectification of the ground elements related to the conceptualizer, therefore they can be combined to form a construal configuration.

20 Note the difference between “minimizing” and “minimal” and that between “maximizing” and “maximal”.


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features can be verified consequently. Their representative works are selected for the investigation.

10) 送友人

李白

Taking Leave of A Friend Li Bo, Tr. Ezra Pound.

（青山横北郭）1

（Blue mountains to the north of the walls,）1

（白水绕东城）2

（White river winding about them;）2

（此地一为别

孤蓬万里征）3

（Here we must make separation And go out through a thousand miles of dead grass）3.

（浮云游子意

落日故人情

挥手自兹去）4

（Mind like a floating wide cloud. Sunset like the parting of old acquaintances Who bow over their clasped hands at a distance.）4

（萧萧班马鸣）5

（Our horses neigh to each other as we are departing）5 .

送友人 FAREWELL

Tr. Herbert A. Giles

（青山横北郭白水绕东城此地二为别）1

（Where blue hills cross the northern sky, Beyond the moat which girds the town, 'Twas there we stopped to say Goodbye!）1

（孤蓬万里征）2 （And one white sail alone dropped down.）2


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（浮云游子意）3 （Your heart was full of wandering thought）3;

（落日故人情）4 （For me,--my sun had set indeed）4;

（挥手自兹去）5（To wave a last adieu we sought）5,

（萧萧班马鸣）6 （Voiced for us by each whinnying steed）6!

(extracted from Lü Shuxiang , 1980, p100-102 )

Corresponding to the first two lines of the original poem in this example—青山横北郭, 白

水绕东城, Pound’s version maintains the construal pattern of the component images 青山 and

北郭with a preposition “to” and also maintains the construal pattern of the integral images “青山

横北郭”and “白水绕东城”, for he gives no linguistic cues to show the connection between “Blue

mountains to the north of the walls”, and “White river winding about them. In contrast, Giles’ version imposes sequential scanning21 construal (one type of perspective construal) with the verbs “ cross” and “girds” on the four component images, and use “beyond” to relate the two integral

images. Regarding the fifth and sixth lines浮云游子意/落日故人情, which enforces no construal

upon the images “浮云”, “游子意”, “落日”and “故人情” in the original text, Pound’s version

objectifies the connections, using “like” to force a comparison between “Mind” and “ a floating wide cloud”, and one between “Sunset” and “the parting of old acquaintances”. In contrast, Giles’ version enforces more construal shifts by imposing empathy construal22

Pound and Yip developed similar aesthetics of the Chinese poems and similar methods of Chinese poetry translation. However, it does not mean that they both practice this method throughout all their translations. As we know, Pound experienced different stages in theorizing Chinese poetics, and his translations were mostly acclaimed for their role in leading him to “imagism”, not for their being good translations. Pound did not apply his ideogrammic method in all his translations. To compromise with differences between the source and target language conventions he tended to focus on integral images in his Chinese poetry translation. Therefore, if necessary, relations between component images are sometimes objectified, as shown in his translation of the above poem and others (cf. his translation of 长干行 The River Merchant's

on the two lines, with the addition of “Your heart”, “for me” and “my”. The analysis demonstrates, as compared to another translator, that Pound’s translation tries to minimize his perspective construal and enforce maximized subjectification, but within certain limits.

21 Conceptualizing a complex scene may require a complex array of cognitive events. Summary scanning refers to the co-activation or

simultaneous activation of events corresponding to different facets of a complex scene, while sequential scanning refers to the successive activation of a series of events (Langacker, 1987).

22 Empathy refers to the case where the speaker takes the perspective of the participant in the reported event (Kuno & Kaburaki, 1977, quoted from Croft & Cruse, 2004.). Empathy is perspectival and is subject to alternative construals.


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Wife) Different from Pound, Yip maintains the construal configuration on a rather lower level,

trying to preserve each component images that can be derived from the original in the “non-interference” pattern. Fearing that he may lose something that may contribute to the aesthetic effects of a poem, he develops a two-step procedure for translating Chinese poetry, by which his translation is always based on a word-by-word gloss. As he claims in the preface to Chinese Poetry: An Anthology of Major Modes and Genres, the effect is to correct more than a century of distortion caused by translators who were blind to the intricacies and aesthetics of the Chinese language, and to let English readers finally enter into the dynamics of the originals.

Let’s have a feel of his method with the following two examples:

11) 春望

Spring Scene

杜甫 by Du Fu tr. by Wai-lim Yip (叶维廉)

(国破)1（山河在）2，

((All ruins)a, (the empire)b)1; (mountains and rivers in view)2.

（城春）3（草木深）4，

((To the city)a, (spring)b)3: (grass and trees are thick)4.

（感时）5（花溅泪）6，

（The times strike）5.（(Before flowers)a, (tears break loose)b）6.

(恨别)7（鸟惊心）8。

（Separation cuts）7. （Birds startle our heart）8.

（烽火连三月）9，

(Beacon fires continued for three months on end)9.

(家书抵万金)10

(A letter from home is worth thousands of gold pieces)10.

(白头搔更短)11，

(White hair, scratched, becomes thinner and thinner)11,

(浑欲不胜簪)12。

(So thin it can hardly hold a pin)12. We can see his effort in bringing out the component images from his way of segmentation.

The original poem is composed of eight lines, but the translator divides it into twelve segments. In segment 1, 3, 6, further segmentation is made respectively, and he doesn’t impose any perspective


19

construal on the images represented by each segment or sub-segment and the relations between them are subjectified. As Mark Alexander (2003) criticizes him, “he can only avoid clarifying the relationship between ‘the city’ and ‘spring’ in the second line by producing a phrase with no meaning at all (To the city, spring)”. In the translation, the construal configuration (minimized perspective construal and maximized subjectifiation of image schemas) is intentionally maintained, even to an extremistic degree. Here are two other examples of Yip’s poetry translation, which remarkably represent his cognitive style.

12) (木末)1(芙蓉花)2，（山中发红萼）3。（涧户）4（寂）5（无人）6，（纷纷开且落）7。

（High on tree-tips）1, （the hibiscus）2. / （In the mountain sets forth red calyxes.）3/ （A home by a stream,）4 （quiet.）5 （No man.）6 / （It blooms and falls, blooms and falls）7. (Extracted from Wai-lim Yip, 1997)

There are four lines in the original poem, but Yip divides it into 7 segments, and potential component images are tapped to the utmost. Similarly, the images represented by the seven segments are imposed no perspective and the image schematic relations are subjectified.

13) (春眠不觉晓)1，(处处闻啼鸟)2，(夜来风雨声)3，(花落知多少)4。

(Spring time sleep：too deep to know dawn) 1. (Everywhere，birds sing) 2. (Entire last night：winds and rains) 3. (Falling flowers：how many？)4”

In the original poem, the three perceptive or mental acts 觉（know），闻(hear)，知(know) require an agent, which is subjectified given the Chinese poetic convention. In the translation, Yip strategically uses three colons to avoid the agent, depending on the interpretation trigger to establish links; the effect is a typical succession of individual images with no perspective construal.

Liu Shaoming once commented on Yip’s rendering of the poem (刘绍铭著，1987) like this: “In

terms of sentence pattern, the distinctiveness of Yip’s translation lies in the use of the three colons. However, it has a bad subsidiary effect, for the colons cut off the speech flow. Yip’s translation of

the first line ‘春眠不觉晓’ would mislead a TL reader, who has never read the poem, to think that

the poet’s sleep is too deep for him to know the dawn. But actually this line implies that he is awake now…” (my translation) Actually Yip is intentionally maintaining a holistic cognitive style of translation, rather than following the construal pattern of the original poem to achieve local translation equivalence. From Liu’s comment we can see how much Yip sacrifices the meaning of the original poem to maintain the construal mode required by the non-interference principle, and we can also feel the pressure the cognitive style of translation goes against.

There are other translators consciously or unconsciously following the construal configuration in translating Chinese poetry. Bearing the defining features in mind, we can easily judge which of the three versions of Ma Zhinyuan’s poem accords more closely with the ideogrammic method or non-interference principle. Version 3 realizes the highest level of subjectificaton, leaving most of the ground elements implicit, taking no vantage point, thus it practices the ideogrammic method or non-interference principle in a typical way.

To be noted, the Principle of Relevance and other ways of construal, which provide an


20

inferential basis for the understanding of the poetic effects, support the defining function of the two features.

In example 10), the juxtaposition of the two images compels a reader to compare them and establish connections between them—processing effort to obtain contextual effects in the spirit of Optimal Relevance. Then, based on his encyclopedic knowledge, he constructs a metaphorical mapping between them (metaphorical construal), whether the mapping is already in the conceptualizer’s mind (the metaphorical mapping between “Mind” and “ a floating wide cloud” and that between “Sunset” and “the parting of old acquaintances” may be conventional to Chinese readers), or the mapping is constructed impromptu. Only based on these considerations of the cognitive processes and principles can the poet enforce the construal configuration. Similarly, the translator should empathize with the TLT reader to figure out the process of understanding based on the construal operations, and the cognitive principle. Then accordingly, he sets up the linguistic cues to compose the translated text that either fits in with the construal configuration or changes it. In example 10), Pound assumes that the metaphorical mapping between the images “Mind” and “a floating wide cloud” and that between “Sunset” and “the parting of old acquaintances” are new to Western readers, so he uses a preposition like to connect them.

To sum up, the two defining features we venture to characterize the classical Chinese poetry are also the features that define the cognitive styles of Pound and Yip. From the perspective of construal, the relations between the Chinese language, Chinese poetics and different translation styles are more explicit and systematic. Therefore, we can also use the defining features to judge whether a translator’s style fits in with Pound and Yip’s, or whether he wants to transplant the original poetic power of Chinese poems—the potential existence of construal alternatives. 3.4 The Transplanting Issue and Concluding Remarks

Shelley (1820) is the first to use the metaphor “transplanting the seed ” to describe poetry translation. He argues that though a poem cannot be transfused from one language to another, it can nevertheless be transplanted. And the seed can be placed in new soil for a new plant to develop. (Bassnett & Lefevere, 1998/2001) Regarding Chinese poetry translation, the plant is the imagist movement with Pound, and a translational aesthetics with Yip. But how they happen requires a linguistic interpretation.

According to Langacker (1987, p98-99), grammar embodies conventional imagery (Langacker, 1991:39), and the configuration of imagery related to the certain semantic structure in a certain language use is tailored to the conventions of a language system. Because languages differ in their grammatical structures, they differ in the imagery that speakers employ when conforming to linguistic conventions. Also as Croft and Wood (2000:55) illustrates Langacker’s (1987) view, “It is not the case that any time we think, we must conceptualize our experience in the way that our language requires us to. But it is the case that any time we express our thoughts in language, we must conceptualize our experience in the way that our language requires us to. Cognition may be linguistically neutral, but language is not semantically neutral”. The defining construal operations, which form a preferred construal configuration, are developed and rooted in the Chinese langua-culture, and represent the Chinese mind. However, this conventional construal configuration can be transplanted to another language, like English. The transplanting effect of the Classical Chinese poetry translation can be explained in terms of the status of construal in the interaction between language and cognition.


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On the one hand, as Langacker (1987) argues, lexico-grammatical structure doesn’t impose any significant constraints on our thinking process (cf. Langacker 1976); and “the symbolic resources of a language generally provide an array of alternative images for describing a given scene, and we shift from one to another with great facility, often within the confines of a single sentence”.

On the other hand, when we characterize the features of Classical Chinese poetry or its translation, what we are dealing with is not the construal pattern of one certain expression and we are not aiming at local equivalence. The high level operation provides sufficient space for our flexible conceptualization, and “this flexibility is due to the nature of the human mind as it engages with the world”. (Langacker, 1991: 12)

To conclude, the analysis of classical Chinese poetry in terms of traditional syntactic categories is essentially problematic, and the essential features and the poetic effects of classical Chinese poetry and a special cognitive style of its translation can be characterized based on construal analysis and the three principles in the Cognitive Model. The transplanting effects of the translation practice-- the seeds of Chinese poetry are transplanted into another culture, and it bears a different flower on a different ground, and the aesthetic principles involved—the ideogrammic method and the non-interference principle can thus be better characterized and explained on an empirical ground. The myth of subjectivism says, “ art and poetry transcend rationality and objectivity and put us in touch with the more important reality of our feelings and intuitions”.(Lakoff, 1980, p189) However, our arguments reveal that rather than purely myth, the Chinese poetry and its translational aesthetics are based on certain cognitive constraints--a certain construal pattern originated in Chinese language. And this further confirms the constructivist position of cognitive linguistics, a position neither the same as subjectivism nor objectivism. The mode of construal defining the Chinese poetics is developed and rooted in Chinese langua-culture. Given the flexibility of the human conceptualization, it can also be realized in other langua-cultures, such as English. In a sense, Ezra Pound and Wai-lim Yip’s achievement in literature partly lies in transplanting the conventional construal mode of Chinese poetics into the English langua-culture. The mode of construal is introduced in an unconventional way, in the name of “translation”, and it enriches the target langua-culture.

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A Cognitive Stylistic Analysis of Classical Chinese Poetry Translation

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