基于眼动技术的英译汉过程中隐喻翻译的认知努力研究——以经济文本中的婚姻隐喻翻译为例

An Eye-Tracking Study of Cognitive Efforts in Translating English Metaphors Into Chinese: With the Translation of Marriage Metaphors in Economic Texts in Focus

本研究基于眼动技术,并结合敲键记录,以汉语为母语的英语专业研究生作为受试,通过测量译者在隐喻与非隐喻、不同隐喻范畴以及隐喻翻译策略等方面的行为数据,探讨译者在翻译经济文本中婚姻隐喻时付出的认知努力。实验结果发现:(1)在英译汉过程中,受试在翻译婚姻隐喻时所需要的认知努力比翻译非隐喻时更大,这一点印证了以往对隐喻翻译的研究。(2)在婚姻隐喻的不同范畴(包括婚姻主题范畴、婚前求爱范畴与婚姻典礼范畴)中,译者在婚前求爱范畴中投入的认知努力最多,这表明当源语与目的语的文化差异程度大时,隐喻翻译的认知难度就会增大。(3)受试在运用隐喻翻译策略时,对源语意象替换(M1-M2)策略所花费认知努力最多,释义(M-P)策略花费认知努力最少。保留源语意象(M-M)比释义(M-P)策略要花费更多的认知努力,这一结果与以往的研究不同。

This study selected marriage metaphor as the object and explored the cognitive effort invested in translating the marriage metaphor from English into Chinese. In the study, the data of cognitive effort were made up of eyetracking data including the first fixation time, total fixation number and total fixation time and key logging data such as production time of metaphor.Participants were 12 second year postgraduate students majoring in translation studies. They were asked to translate one passage in economic news from English(L2) to Chinese(L1), with a total of around 150 words and 11 marriage metaphors.The key-logging and eye-moving behavior of participants was measured by eye tracker Eyelink1000 and key logger Translog Ⅱ simultaneously.The findings are as follows: Firstly, there are significant differences between translating marriage metaphors and non-metaphors in terms of cognitive efforts. Translating marriage metaphors is more cognitively effortful than translating nonmetaphors, which lends support to the former studies of metaphor translation. Secondly, among the three translation strategies(Metaphor1-Metaphor 2, Metaphor-Metaphor, and MetaphorParaphrase), participants allocated the most cognitive effort to the M1-M2 strategy, followed by the M-M strategy and then the M-P strategy.Thirdly, among the three categories of marriage metaphor(including the category of marriage theme, the category of dating and the category of wedding), participants spent the most cognitive effort on translating metaphors in the category of dating.