Translation Of Metaphor From The Perspective Of Context

Metaphor is pervasive in our daily life, and it is not only a figure of speech, but also a mode of thinking for human beings to know the world. Scholars have made a multi-level and systematic study of metaphor from cognitive psychological, philosophical, pragmatic and semiotic aspects since 1970s, but the translation of metaphor does not gain the equal attention. After reading the relative literatures, the author finds that the western scholars mainly study the translatability of metaphor and translation techniques and Chinese scholars study metaphor translation from four aspects: semantic, imagery, cultural and cognitive aspects. Anyhow, the identification and understanding of metaphors can be only realized in specific context, and any translation cannot be separated from context, so this paper studies the translation of metaphor from the perspective of context. The author firstly analyzes the relationship between context and metaphor.Context is the environment in which language is used, which embraces linguistic context and non-linguistic context. Non-linguistic context is subdivided into situational context and cultural context. And new semantic triangle has a close relationship with context. New semantic triangle covers three elements: referent, reference (thought) and linguistic sign. Referent world and reference (thought) world belong to non-linguistic context, and linguistic sign world belongs to linguistic context. In this sense, new semantic triangle is context. Metaphor is produced when people know the world and create the language; its essence is to understand one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain; its functions are mainly reflected in cognitive and linguistic aspects; and it plays an important role in the process of understanding the world and creating new vocabulary and new sense, and also promotes the development of human thought indirectly.As people live on the same planet, people always have similar experiences for one thing and similar metaphorical expressions are produced. At the same time, due to different language families and cultures, people in different places will use different source domains to map the same target domain. The same metaphor may represent different meanings in different contexts. Getting a correct understanding of the original metaphor before translating is very critical. And there are three terms concerned with metaphor translation: object, image and sense. According to the contextual similarities and differences in two languages, five translation methods are put forward: transplant, compensation, replacement, conversion and omission. When the original image can evoke the same or similar association for the target language readers, transplant can be adopted. When cultural vacancy occurs and the original image must be retained, notes and explanation can be added to compensate the sense. When a standard image in the target language can be found, replacement is feasible. When there is no difficulty for the target language readers to understand the original image, but the literal translation can make the text unnatural, the metaphor can be converted into simile. If the above methods are not feasible, the translator can adopt omission, that is, omit the metaphor and just translate the sense.Lastly, the paper draws the conclusion based on the above research, and comes up with the subjects for further studies concerning the translation of metaphor.