A Cognitive Study Of Synaesthesia In Fortress Besieged And Its Translation

Synaesthesia is a mixture of various sensory feelings. The phenomenon that one sense is expressed by another sense relying on the imagination stimulated by the sensory is prevalent in literature. The cognitive basis of the synaesthesia lies in the similar psychological association between different properties of sensory organs.Conceptual Metaphor Theory(CMT) assumes that the realization of concept and thinking can be achieved by bodily experience other than abstract linguistic symbols.As a stylistic feature involving various sensory feelings, synaesthesia is very crucial in constructing the reader’s context and therefore can bring a better cognitive experience to the readers. Apparently, synaesthesia’s translation will affect the understanding of the target language readers. Being a cognitive mechanism shared by all human beings, synaesthesia expressions in diverse language share various similarities. Meanwhile, under different cultural backgrounds, one sensory sometimes produces a different cognitive mechanism, which leads to the disparity in synaesthesia expressions. Its complexities bring a challenge to translators. Previous researches mainly concentrate on the cognitive universality of the synaesthesia but research concerning the synaesthesia translation in the novel is insufficient.In this study, Fortress Besieged and its English translation by Mao Guoquan and Jean Kelly are selected as the research corpus. Firstly, with the assistance of Antconc3.0, the synaesthesia in both texts are classified and retrieved according to target sense to explore the regularities and the inclinations of the translation from the textual level and the lexical level. Under the guidance of Conceptual Integration Theory, the cognitive process of synaesthesia in this novel has been illustrated, together with their cognitive stylistic effect and aesthetic value. Furthermore, case study has been carried out by tracing back to the context of the relative synaesthesia and investigating their stylistic functions as well as translation norms.According to the data analysis, several findings obtained are presented as follows:(1) there are 36 lists of synaesthesia at the textual level in the original text and the number in the translation is almost consistent with the original text except one transfer and one missing. Nevertheless, compared with the original work’s 33 lists of synaesthesia at the lexical level, just 10 lists are conserved in the translation.(2)Through further observations of the contextual effect, the reservation of the synaesthesia form at the textual level in the target text is meaningful at large because it reserves the art effect of the original text and makes the target readers sense a similar cognitive context. At the lexical level, it seems that the translator tends to deal with it in a more flexible way. The results show that most of the synaesthesia translations are appropriate. However, some problems still exist in the translation. For instance, the omission of the synaesthesia form or the change of the target sense in some cases will result in the change of the original cognitive world or the disappearance of subtle meanings conveyed by synaesthesia.The cognitive turn of the synaesthesia translation compensates the defect of the traditional semantic theory and rhetorical theory. Hence, based on some cognitive views, the discussion of the synaesthesia translation in Fortress Besieged will provide a new perspective and approach to the further studies on synaesthesia translation in novels.