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Interaction Between Language and the Mind Through Translation: A perspective from profile/base organization∗ Qing WU (PhD Student, Translation Studies) Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Abstract Profile/base organization in cognitive linguistics emphasizes a hierarchy of salience imposed on construal by usage events of some concept. Shift in terms of profile/base alignment is highly likely to occur in a cross-linguistic/cultural context. Granted two definitive features of translation, i.e. accountability of a TT to the STs textually-grounded intention, unless the TT has an otherwise stated intention, and systematicity attained within the TT itself, whether the shift(s) in a translation are explainable, and how, fall within our concern. This paper has examined the profile/base organization in two Chinese translations of the opening paragraph of William Faulkners The Sound and The Fury, and attempted to locate the factors to account for the textual realization in the TTs as such. 1 Introduction A crucial question to start with The most prominent is probably the well-established but by no means flawless models derived from linguistics, which is now sometimes referred to, pejoratively, as the scientistic approach and generally assumed to be still hung up on naive notions of equivalence and limited to the text as the uppermost unit of analysis (Baker 1996: 9). In fact, as Hatim (1999: 203) attempts to appeal to the scholarly attention, a simple question like what kind of linguistics are we talking about on a given occasion? is crucial before one starts to disagree or agree. Scope and perspective of study This article will draw heavily on cognitive linguistics, and apply its notion of profile/base organization to analysis of an original and its translations, the effort being intended to understand the interactions between language and the mind in decision-making and to characterize the po