| Irony,called "反语","反话","反辞" or "反讽" in Chinese,is not only a ubiquitous and complicated figure of speech in Chinese and western culture,but also an important way of human cognition and thinking.The flexibility of its use forms,richness of pragmatic connotations and contextual dependence of meaning understanding have caused the complexity and challenge of irony construal and translation to a certain extent.Traditional irony translation research tends to regard irony translation as an interlingual transformation at the rhetorical level,and relatively ignores the cognitive nature of irony;cognitive research incorporates cognitive features of irony into translation research and focuses on describing and explaining the cognitive process of irony translation according to the psychological foundation and mental operation mechanism of irony.Pertaining to the category of cognitive linguistics,Cognitive Frame Theory emphasizes the role of comprehensive factors such as language,psychology,social culture and thinking in the cognitive process of translation.It can provide a relatively new theoretical perspective for irony translation research,and offer feasible and effective help to irony translation difficulties.Irony is a crucial stylistic feature of Lu Xun’s novels,which contains deep social and cultural connotations as well as complex ideological and emotional world.Given all this,based on the well-known linguist Charles Fillmore’s Cognitive Frame Theory,taking irony in Lu Xun’s novel as the research object and starting from the role of cognitive frame and its features in irony recognition,understanding and reconstruction,this thesis mainly explores the specific process and methods or strategies of irony translation.By observing,describing and explaining the original texts of Lu Xun’s novels Nahan and Panghuang and their three English translation versions(Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang’s version,William Lyell’s version,Julia Lovell’s version),the characteristics of irony expressions in Lu Xun’s novels have been summarized,the cognitive frame operation process diagram of irony translation has been constructed,the cognitive frame transformation models in irony translation have been investigated,and the deep cognitive mechanism of the similarities and differences displayed by different translators in the process of irony translation has been discussed.It’s found that:(1)the process of irony translation is the multiple interaction between the subject and the object,such as the source text,the original author,the translator.The cognitive frame operation process of irony translation includes three stages:recognition,understanding and reconstruction.The translator can use the knowledge of the source language frame system activated by irony markers to identify and comprehend irony,and correspond to or adjust the levels,elements or perspectives of the source language frame to achieve irony reconstruction after comparing and corresponding to the source and target language frame.(2)The identification markers of irony expressions in Lu Xun’s novel are roughly divided into four dimensions:phonetic markers,lexical markers,syntactic markers and rhetorical markers.It seems that Lu Xun tends to use rhetorical and lexical markers to express ironic intentions,while syntactic and phonetic markers are utilized relatively infrequently.(3)The cognitive frame transformation models of irony translation in Lu Xun’s novel are mainly manifested as:cognitive frame level transformation,cognitive frame element transformation,cognitive frame perspective transformation and cognitive frame transplantation.Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang mainly use the cognitive frame equivalent transformation or other models to faithfully convey the ironic effect in the source language;Lyell tends to employ the cognitive frame transplantation model to explain the connotation of irony through amplification and annotation,to reproduce or enhance the ironic effect;Lovell primarily adopts the cognitive frame element transformation model,especially the cognitive frame element deletion,which has caused the weakening or loss of the ironic effect to some extent.This thesis can provide a certain enlightenment for irony translation research and other forms of non-literal language translation research. |
