Allocation Of Cognitive Resources In Sight Translation Of Metaphors

Translation process researchers have devoted full attention to how translators or interpreters allocate their cognitive resources to handle such a problem as metaphor translation and adopted various methods to investigate the issue.Findings are sometimes inconsistent,and as these studies have mostly explored the issue in written translation,little research has been carried out to study the issue in sight translation.And previous studies suggest that the way task takers allocate their cognitive resources varies from mode to mode(Gile,1995;Agrifoglio,2004).This study examines the allocation of cognitive resources of translators in English-Chinese sight translation of metaphors using eye-tracking data.Results suggest that sight translators allocate different amount of cognitive resources to process metaphors with different levels of metaphoricity.Specifically,1)not only does metaphoricity have a significant bearing on the global allocation of cognitive resources,but also on that at metaphor comprehension stage and that at reformulation stage during the sight translation task.2)there is a significant positive correlation between the overall cognitive resources allocation of the translators,the cognitive resources allocation at metaphor comprehension stage and that at metaphor reformulation stage.But the allocation of cognitive resources at metaphor comprehension stage,compared with that at metaphor reformulation stage,accounts for a larger proportion of the global cognitive resources allocation of the translators,so more cognitive resources are allocated to metaphor comprehension stage.3)compared with metaphorical expression,literal expression sometimes consumes more cognitive resources;parallel processing model is reflected in the case of sight translation but it is a case of both vertical and parallel model in metaphor sight translation,depending on metaphoricity.And context is at play during the process indicated by shorter fixations on metaphors and longer ones on literal expressions.