A Cognitive Approach To Translating English Subject/Object Relative Clauses Into Chinese

This is an empirical research that probes into SRs translation and ORs translation from a cognitive perspective.It compares two major types of relative clauses(i.e.SRs,subject-extracted relative clauses;ORs,object-extracted relative clauses)and sub-types of SRs and ORs(i.e.SS,OS,SO,OO)in terms of cognitive effort invested in their translation process.It also discusses the impact of the antecedent animacy on the cognitive effort invested in translating them.As a part of a National Social Sciences Project(No.15BYY023)titled “A translation process corpus-based study of translation units in Chinese-English translating”,research data were collected collaboratively by the project members.29 sophomores of English major participated in this experiment.They were asked to translate twenty four sentences embedded with relative clauses from English(L2)to Chinese(L1),which were collected from previous relevant studies and modified to be almost equal in number of words and similar in context for each kind.While carrying on the task,the subjects spoke out their thoughts(i.e.concurrent TAPs)with Translog recording all their typing activities.Later a retrospective interview was carried out,and data elicited from TAPs and retrospective interviews were recorded and transcribed to explore possible reasons behind.In this case,with a mix of quantitative and qualitative data corroborating with each other,a triangulation research was conducted.The collected data were analyzed by SPSS through paired t-tests and one-way ANOVA.Cognitive effort in this research is measured by production time,number of pauses,and number of text eliminations needed for translating relative clauses,which were recorded in Translog.Comparing SRs with ORs,a significant difference in cognitive effort invested in translating them emerged.Specifically,A-ORs translation is more cognitively effortful than A-SRs(symbol A means “animate antecedent”),supporting Subject/Object Asymmetry.While I-SRs translation costs more cognitive effort than I-ORs translation(symbol I means “inanimate antecedent”),and this inconsistency can possibly be attributed to the impact of antecedent animacy.As to the hierarchy of sub-types of SRs and ORs,the result shows I-SS > I-SO > I-OO(symbol > means “more cognitively effortful in translation”),suggesting disagreement with SOHH.This significantly inconsistent variance lies in the fact that I-SS translation costs more cognitive effort than I-ORs translation,which can be explained by thematic mismatch or more cognitive effort invested in translating verb “pleased” in I-SS.It is shown in the result that A-SO > A-SS > A-OS,partly in line with SOHH.And the more cognitively efortful translation of A-OO than A-SS(inconsistent with SOHH)can be accounted for by more time and pauses needed for translating phrase “belonged to” in A-OO.As for the influence of antecedent animacy on cognitive effort invested in translating SRs and ORs,it shows that I-SRs > A-SRs and A-ORs > I-ORs.The noticeable influence of antecedent animacy is also the reason why I-SRs translation requires more cognitive effort than I-ORs translation,and why I-SS translation is more cognitively effortful than I-ORs.Furthermore,the research assumes that all the significant variation caused by antecedent animacy can be attributed to the thematic mismatch.As a triangulation research with various sources of data that enhances the validity and credibility of the study,this translation process research offers a more convincing approach for verifying Subject/Object Asymmetry,SOHH and exploring the influence of antecedent animacy on RC processing from a cognitive perspective.It may also help teachers to make suitable teaching plan for Chinese students' learning of these two types of relative clauses and its sub-types that fits their cognitive feature most.However,some limitations are found in this study,such as inadequate between-group design,and limited types and number of sentences embedded with relative clauses for investigation.Follow-up studies may use subjects at various levels of translation proficiency,with more other types and number of relative clauses to make a deeper exploration.