A Cognitive Approach To Metaphor Translation Strategy

Metaphor plays a key role in inter-cultural communication, and it has become a new trend to look into the process of metaphor translation from a cognitive perspective. Till now most relevant studies were carried out among western languages, so it is necessary to probe into the process of English-Chinese metaphor translation.This is an empirical research that explores metaphor translation strategies from a cognitive perspective. It compares three metaphor translation strategies(i.e., M-M, a direct transfer of the ST metaphor; M-P, paraphrase; and M1-M2, replacing the ST metaphor with a new TT metaphor) in terms of the frequency and cognitive effort invested in them. It also discusses the impact of cognitive effort on the frequency of metaphor translation strategy. As a part of a National Social Sciences Project(No. 15BYY023), research data were collected collaboratively by the project members. Research subjects were15 first year graduate students majoring in translation and interpreting. They were asked to translate three passages in economy from English(L2) to Chinese(L1), with a total of around 240 words and 21 metaphors. While going through the task, they spoke out their thoughts(i.e., concurrent TAPs) with Translog recording all their typing activities. Later a retrospective interview was carried out, and data generated from TAPs and interview were recorded and transcribed. Translog records the production time of metaphor translation; TAPs not only provide the number of printed lines generated around each and every metaphor translation, but reveal the thinking process of the subjects; the retrospective interview probes into reasons behind the choice of different metaphor translation strategies. In this case, a triangulation research was carried out with a mix of quantitative and qualitative data corroborating with each other. Research data were analyzed by SPSS through chi-square test, repeated-measures ANOVA, and Spearman correlation.There are three major findings. First, there is a significant difference in the frequency of the M-M, M-P and M1-M2 strategies. The M-P strategy is most frequently used in English-Chinese metaphor translation. This is contrary to earlier studies based on western language pairs, which indicate that the M-M strategy is most frequently used. This inconsistency may be due to a larger cultural and linguistic gap between English and Chinese, which makes a direct transfer of the ST image inappropriate in the TT. Apart from this, other factors related to the experiment may also play a role, for instance, subjects have no access to aid during the translation process, and they tend to put time pressure on themselves though there is no time limitation in this experiment. Besides text type of the testing material may also be a major factor. Second, indirect translation strategies(M-P and M1-M2) are more cognitively effortful than the direct strategy(M-M). The difference between the M1-M2 and M-M strategy is statistically significant as indicated by both production time and printed lines; while that between the M-P and M-M strategy is not clear, which is significant in printed lines, yet not significant in production time. The result may be explained by the fact that translation is a process, and indirect strategies involve a more complex process during translation. For instance, the M1-M2 strategy not only includes finding out the ST metaphorical image, but extracting its underlying meaning and figuring out a new metaphorical image in the TT that generates similar effect with the ST image. All these extra steps may give rise to more cognitive effort. Third, there is no relationship between cognitive effort and the frequency of metaphor translation strategy. Yet this does not mean that cognitive effort has no impact on the choice of a strategy. And a possible explanation within the framework of relevance theory is that the relation between these two factors is balanced by an effort of searching for an “optimal relevance”, that is to use a strategy that can save cognitive effort and achieve successful communication by taking readers’ expectation into account.Relevant findings of this research may shed light on cognitive process of translators in the choice of metaphor translation strategies, and a triangulation research with various sources of data also enhances the validity and credibility of this research, which may offer methodological suggestions to relevant study. It may also help teachers to observe students’ thinking process in English and Chinese metaphor translation so as to offer more effective help. Yet this research is subject to several limitations, like the sample size is not big enough, there is no between-group design, and it deals with economic metaphors only. Follow-up studies may use a larger group of subjects with various levels of translation proficiency. It may also be relevant to select metaphors in other fields to see if different text type will lead to a different proportion of the M-P strategy.