Cognitive Translation in Intercultural Education: An Ontological Reconstruction Beyond the Language Boundary

Abstract

In an era of deepening globalisation and simultaneous cultural polarisation, intercultural education confronts a profound ‘proficiency paradox’: unprecedented advances in linguistic competence have not produced commensurate gains in genuine intercultural understanding. This paper argues that the fundamental obstacle to intercultural communication lies not in lexical or grammatical differences but in the deep incommensurability of the ‘Soma-Emotion-Meaning’ three-layer cognitive structures that different cultural groups embody. Drawing on Wang Dongyue’s Progressive Weakening-Compensation Principle and Zhang Xusheng’s three-layer cognitive structure theory , the paper proposes a new framework of ‘Cognitive Translation’ (CT) that moves beyond the conventional paradigm of linguistic translation.
Cognitive Translation aims to restore the embodied metaphors and emotional schemas underlying linguistic symbols, thereby achieving a transition from ‘symbolic conversion’ to ‘meaning generation’. The paper further proposes a three-dimensional pedagogical strategy: the embodied turn in translanguaging practice, the neural activation of cultural prototype imagery, and the institutionalised cultivation of intercultural empathy. This theoretical reconstruction offers both neuroscientific and educational-philosophical foundations for developing intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in the age of artificial intelligence.