The Effects Of Conventionality On Cognitive Effort In Metaphor Translation Process

This thesis employs an empirical research to explore the effects of metaphor conventionality on cognitive effort in metaphor translation process by using the eye-tracking and key-logging methods.Three research questions are proposed: 1)How does conventionality of metaphor affect the cognitive effort in the source text comprehension stage and target text production stage in metaphor translation? 2)How is the cognitive effort devoted in the source text comprehension stage and the target text production stage in terms of two levels of metaphor conventionality? 3)How does translator's translation ability affect the cognitive effort in the source text comprehension stage and target text production stage in conventional and novel metaphor translation?The present study conducted an experiment among 62 student translators.31 were English-majored undergraduates while the other 31 were postgraduates majoring in translation studies.All of them were required to translate four English texts with certain conventional and novel metaphors.The translation texts were presented in the Translog software.In the whole translation procedure,subjects' eye movements were captured by eye-tracker,while keystrokes were documented by the Translog software.The final statistic results showed that 1)Novel metaphors demand significantly more cognitive effort in both source text comprehension stage and target text production stage when compared to conventional metaphors.2)Much more cognitive effort is spent in the target text production stage compared with the source text comprehension stage in both conventional and novel metaphor translation.3)The translators with higher translation capability spend less cognitive effort in both stages of conventional and novel metaphor translation,but the differences aren't statistically significant.