译者翻译过程认知路径——基于语料库方法的《红楼梦》“死亡隐喻”翻译研究

Translator’s cognitive pathways in translation: A corpus-based study of the translation of death metaphors in A Dream of Red Mansions

本文主要基于认知语言学的概念隐喻理论,结合语料库的方法,以《红楼梦》两个英译本中对“死亡隐喻”表达的翻译为例,回溯译者对于此类隐喻表达的翻译认知路径。研究显示,一方面,“死亡隐喻”翻译能够实现是基于涉身体验基础上互通的图式;另一方面,由于涉身体验的文化属性,图式本身会存在差异,更不用说在图式基础上的例示。人们对于相同的目标域会选择不同的源域或者相同的源域但是不同的路径进行例示。译者在翻译过程中基于对双语文化的了解,创造性地为两者的认知路径建立联结,从而实现其翻译行为。

Based on the conceptual metaphor theory of cognitive linguistics and the corpus-based method, this paper takes the translation of “death metaphor” in two English versions of A Dream of Red Mansions as an example to trace the cognitive path of translators in the translation process of such expressions. Research shows that, on the one hand, the realization of the translation of “death metaphor” depends on the mutual schema based on the embodied experience. On the other hand, due to the cultural nature of embodied experience, there will be differences in schema itself, not to mention instantiation on the basis of schema. That is, people will choose different source domains for the same target domain or the same source domain but different paths to instantiate. Based on the understanding of bilingual culture, translators creatively connect the cognitive paths of metaphors from both culture in the process of translation, so as to realize their translation behavior.