A Study Of Cognitive Metaphor Translation In Academic Essays

Metaphor is traditionally recognized as a rhetorical device but the contemporary metaphorical study finds it existing not only in people’s common languages,but in their thinking.This makes the study on the translation of conceptual metaphor an inevitable trend.The author chose an academic essay Lost in Thought:the Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life as the source of his translation practice.As there appear many uses of conceptual metaphor in the essay,which helps the writer make her points clear,vivid and concrete,how to convey the accurate meanings and the language features of the source text is the major challenge in the translation process.This paper first illustrates the views of cognitive metaphor theory and then introduces the conception of conceptual metaphors.Based on the most prevalent life experience and even barely noticeable when used,some metaphors are not difficult to render;on the contrary,others are based on individual’s exclusive experience,and such metaphors make a big challenge.The paper hereby analyzes and sums up the translation difficulties of conceptual metaphors,including ontological metaphor,orientational metaphor,and structural metaphor,in the translation practice.The translation techniques for meeting such challenges are also summarized.In the author’s opinion,the key to translating conceptual metaphor is to understand the original text in the perspective of cognitive metaphor and the cultural similarities or differences.The translator adopts flexible translation techniques including addition,shift,extension and paraphrase,etc.to better convey or deal with the metaphorical images,on the premises of accuracy and readability.