On The Mechanism Of Mappings In The Translation Of Novel Metaphors

In the understanding of traditional rhetoric, metaphor is regarded comparatively less important and rather an addition to literal language which contributes to the publication of truth and daily communication. With the emergence of cognitive linguistics, the conceptual metaphor theory promoted by Lakoff and Johnson in Metaphors We Live By and further developed by scholars like Turner and Kovecses salutes the beginning of a new era of metaphor studies for its unique approach. According to Lakoff and Johnson, grounded in people's everyday experience, metaphor is a conceptual mapping between "source" and "target" domains. Language is filled with conceptual metaphors that consist of conventional and novel metaphors.Translation is regarded by certain scholars as transformation of metaphors since words are metaphors of the physical world. Thus studying translation of metaphors is supposed to shed light immediately on the cognitive mechanism underlying translation process. Based on Lakoff and Johnson's conceptual metaphor theory, the present author tries to study the translation of novel metaphors, abundant in literary works, by examining the mechanism of metaphorical mappings involved in the translation of metaphors concerning different types of novel metaphors.As an illustrative case, the English-Chinese translation of Hamlet is discussed through analyzing three translated versions by Zhu Shenghao, Fang Ping and Sun Dayu under conditions of the same mappings, similar mappings and different mappings. Finally, the present author concludes that the translation of novel metaphors is a complex cognitive process in which different mapping conditions, to a great extent, determine translators'strategies.