Metaphor Translation In Huangdi Neijing Under Conceptual Blending Theory

The metaphor refers to a rhetorical device that uses one thing to express another by similarities between two things. China is so abundant in history and culture that rhetorical devices are not only used in many Chinese literary works, but also in Chinese medical classics to explain the medical knowledge. Huangdi Neijing (hereinafter referred to as Neijing), one of the four major classics of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) contains the metaphor. Based on the ancient philosophy, Neijing applies various kinds of rhetorical devices to vividly express its ideas and contents when expounding on the medical knowledge. Metaphor, as one of the rhetorical devices, plays a significant part in understanding Neijing. To have a good knowledge of metaphor is helpful for the correct understanding of Neijing’s medical ideas.After the proposal of mental space theory, Fauconnier also developed the conceptual blending theory (CBT) which has been considered as an indispensible theoretical branch of cognitive linguistics. Based on mental space, CBT is a cognitive behavior performed in the process of language construction by the mapping and reconstructing of various concept spaces. The four spaces include input spacel, input space2, generic space and the blending space. The general principles of mental space construction are the main content of the theory. This theory focuses on the understanding and interpretation of metaphor by analyzing the construction process of human cognition, and has been applied to some empirical researches on the English translation of metaphor in Chinese classical poetry but not yet to the empirical researches on metaphor translation of TCM classics. For this reason, this study applies this theory to metaphor translation in Neijing and tries to prove the feasibility of CBT in metaphor translation of TCM classics. Meanwhile, it is expected to broaden the perspective of the study on metaphor in TCM classics.This study mainly focuses on:manually retrieving the metaphors and their translation in the first34chapters of Neijing; with the assistance of UltraEditv18.00and ParaConc (Demo), metaphors of the first34chapters were computed; reconstructing the translation process based on the four mental spaces of CBT; analyzing whether the versions of Li&Wei following the principles of CBT; evaluating the merits and defects of the two different versions. Based on the network model and construction principles of CBT and taking metaphors in Neijing as the linguistic data, this study is to interpret the metaphors in Neijing and their translation from the perspective of human cognition. With the sound interpretation of the metaphors, this study reconstructed the translation process, discussed the factors of spaces, and evaluated the accuracy of space mapping as well as the possibility of the translation’s being used as the input space of the readers’ system for the next step of blending concept.This study takes the approach of theory study combining with parallel corpus, explores the translation process of Neijing and evaluates the merits and defects of the two translation versions under the CBT. By comparative analysis, it is concluded that the translation process of metaphor is a process of conceptual blending process. CBT is of great significance in preserving the original meaning of source text. However, due to some limitations of the study on emotional activation and the limitations of the unobvious emotional activation in the corpus, this study only gives priority to the online construction of the meaning without concerning about the emotional activation factors.