Representationalism and Enactivism in Cognitive Translation Studies: A Predictive Processing Perspective

Abstract

Representational Theories of Mind have long dominated Cognitive Translation Studies, typically assuming that translation involves the manipulation of internal representations (symbols) that stand in for external states of affairs. In recent years, classical representationalism has given way to more nuanced, inferential, interpretive, context-sensitive, and modern representational models, some of which align naturally with probabilistic and predictive approaches. While these frameworks remain broadly compatible with one another, radical enactivism offers a more disruptive alternative: it denies representational content altogether, viewing translation instead as an affectively grounded, context-sensitive, self-evidencing activity shaped by the translator’s embodied engagement with text, context, and sociocultural norms. From an enactivist standpoint, translation emerges not from static symbolic mappings, but from situated, embodied, and affectively modulated inference processes that dynamically negotiate meaning across languages. The paper provides a theoretical synthesis, arguing that the Free Energy Principle under Predictive Processing and Active Inference provides a suitable mathematical framework amenable to representational and enactive accounts.