A Study On The Translation Of Plant And Animal Images In Du’s Poems

Du,one of China’s greatest poets in the Tang Dynasty,is known as “Sage of Poetry”.His poems are vivid in artistic style and expressive in emotions,which reflects the poet’s worries and concern for his nation and people and creates a magnificent and sorrowful imagery.Du’s poems contain many conceptual metaphors of plant and animal which well express his emotions and vividly describe the life and society of his age.To better appreciate Du’s poems in a cross-cultural context,it is necessary to understand the conceptual metaphors of plant and animal therein.Under the theoretical framework of the conceptual metaphor theory,this thesis takes Du’s original poems and the English version by Owen as the research material to analyze the cognitive process of the plant and animal metaphors and to examine the translation strategies applied in the English version,expecting to provide implications for the translation of plant and animal images in classical Chinese poetry.This thesis consists of five chapters.The first two chapters present the general introduction to this research and the literature review of relevant researches.Chapter three is the theoretical framework.Chapter four is the cognitive analysis and translation study of conceptual metaphors of plant and animal in Du’s poems.Chapter five concludes the major findings and limitations of the present study.Based on the investigation,firstly,it is found that there exist conceptual metaphors and image schemata behind the plant and animal images in Du’s poems which represent the poet’s cognitive pattern of humans,qualities,emotions and other abstract concepts in poetry creation.Second,in the translation of plant and animal metaphors,Owen mainly adopted the following strategies: literal translation,adding annotations,replacement,conversion,conversion with annotations,and deleting by adding annotations.This research intends to analyze the cognitive and cultural differences behind the plant and animal metaphors in Du’s poems and summarize the corresponding translation strategies,expecting to explore how the translator reveals the poet’s thinking pattern and effectively conveys the cultural connotations.This research has a certain effect on taking Chinese culture to the global stage.