Ana Margarida Abrantes: Translation and Imagination

This presentation tackles the cognitive dimension of translation, by focusing on the particular role of imagination in this process: on the one hand, imagination as mental imagery, i.e. the way in which the mind unfolds visual, aural or other sensorial images from the original language, and integrates them into a Gestalt invested with a particular emotional tone; on the other hand, the informed creative imagination involved in construal, i.e. in the particular choice of presenting those mental images or conceptual representations in the target language, and the influence that the chosen expression has in the conceptual representation evoked in the mind of the final reader.