Cognitive Prominence On C-E Translation Of Emotion Metaphors In Wei Cheng (Fortress Besieged)

Metaphor,which dominates our thought and behavior,is pervasive in everyday life.According to cognitive linguistics,metaphor is not only a rhetorical device,but also an important cognitive means as well as the thinking method of human beings.In addition,it is an essential tool for emotion researches.Since they are rich,abstract and beyond expression,emotions are difficult to sense and convey explicitly.As a result,in order to express those emotions vividly,people often use metaphorical expressions,that is,to describe those feelings with more familiar,understandable or concrete concepts.In accordance with contemporary linguistics,cognitive prominence refers to the semantic focus which is able to stimulate the transference of the attention.Translation process is a complicated mental process,which involves the understanding and analysis of the source text,the transformation of the thinking modes between two languages,and the construction of the target text.Each part in the translation process has different patterns of cognitive prominences.In light of figure-ground theory,this thesis takes the emotion metaphors in the novel Wei Cheng(Fortress Besieged)(hereafter called Fortress Besieged)written by Ch'ien Chung-shu,a well-known Chinese writer and scholar,as the objects and tries to construct a cognitive prominence model on metaphor translation so as to explore the relationship between prominence and metaphor translation.Through a thorough analysis on the prominences in emotion metaphors in both Chinese and English version,this thesis is devoted to revealing the cognitive prominence transference hidden in the C-E metaphor translation.The research findings are as follows.Firstly,cognitive prominence represents the characterization of stage.Understanding and analyzing emotion metaphors can be understood from two stages.At the first stage,based on the similarity prominence and cognitive focalization in metaphors,the focalization of focuses can be divided into external focalization and internal focalization,both of which are associated with similarities in metaphors.At the second stage,as the source domain plays a key role in cognitive prominence,combined with the characteristic or property of the focuses,focuses lying in the source domain have been analyzed as focuses on nouns and on verbs.The former usually highlights the state scope or the connotative meaning of the focus,while the latter always comes along with the prominence on process scope and movement scope.Secondly,cognitive prominence represents transference.For those emotion metaphors in Fortress Besieged,whose prominences are transferred always come along with the changes of the focuses in the transformation process.In addition,in order to meet English grammar and sentence patterns,for those prominences which take body-parts as subjects but without endowing them metaphorical functions,they can be discussed from the scope perspective under the consideration of the whole source domain.However,if the body-parts are endowed with metaphorical functions,then the figure in the first level can be subdivided into another figure and ground.Meanwhile,with the source domain subdividing into another figure or ground,the prominences may have shifted accordingly.Thirdly,cognitive prominence represents subjectivity.There are many factors that can affect the choice of figure or ground in the course of translation,and the subjectivity of the translator is the factor of crucial importance,especially in the process of constructing the target text.Therefore,during emotion metaphor translation process,translator should follow the best and equivalent mappings.If necessary,sentence patterns and passive voice/active voice can be adjusted,or information can be added or deleted to avoid the dislocation of figure or ground.