The Relevance Of Communicative Function To The Translation Of Metaphor

Modern metaphor studies have expounded that metaphor in language is not just a rhetoric device, but also a cognitive apparatus. People employ metaphor to recognize, to describe experiences of ordinary life, and some abstract, difficult-to-talk-about phenomena or emotions. Obviously metaphor as a linguistic phenomenon serves particular function, that is, communicative function. However, up to now, little systematic work has been done on the communicative function of metaphor, especially on the relevance of the communicative function of metaphor to its translation.This thesis attempts to provide a remedy for this inadequacy and to increase people's awareness of the fact that metaphor serves various communicative purposes that are relevant to the practice of metaphor translation. After illustrating the prevalence of metaphor in language, the thesis examines in detail the communicative function of metaphor, and then explores the significance of the function in the translation of metaphor. The thesis emphasizes that metaphor is on the whole translatable from the perspective of communicative function, however, in translation practice, translators have to follow certain established principle, i.e. dynamic message equivalence, and be careful about some difficulties that are likely to occur in the process of translation. Translators have to adopt some proper translation strategies so that the communicative function of the original metaphor can be preserved to the fullest possible extent in the translation. And what's more, the thesis contributes some proposals for the translation of metaphor. The concluding part brings together key aspects of the frameworks that have been identified in the previous sections.