Multimodal Translation Of Conceptual Metaphor

Conceptual Metaphor Theory holds that metaphor is not only a figure of speech in language but a way of human’s deep thinking and behavior.Since the theory was proposed by Lakoff & Johnson in the 1980 s,conceptual metaphor has attracted great interest from scholars especially those in cognitive linguistics,and the studies on conceptual metaphor translation have emerged in large quantity.Most of those studies,however,focused almost solely on metaphors in verbal modality but paid little attention to those in multimodal modality.This paper,through the case study,aims to investigate how conceptual metaphors can be translated from mono-mode to multimodal metaphors and the impact of this multimodal translation.The metaphor in Zhuangzi,a Chinese classic,is an important way of thinking and speaking,by which the rich and abstract Taoist philosophy can be conveyed effectively.Taking Zhuangzi and its English comic book The Way of Nature as a case for study,this paper attempts to explore the translation of conceptual metaphors in multimodal discourse,such as the changes in metaphors’ quantity and type,the translation methods and text-image relationships.Based on Lakoff’s classification of conceptual metaphor and Feng Dezheng’s multimodal metaphor analysis framework,a new analytical framework for metaphor translation research has been proposed,which consists of metaphor types,multimodal translation methods and text-image relationships.This study is assisted by NVivo,a qualitative analysis software,in the process of data collection,data coding and quantitative statistics on the source text and target text.Four questions are to be answered: 1)Are there any changes in the number and type of conceptual metaphors in multimodal translation? 2)What translation methods are adopted in interlingual and intersemiotic translation of conceptual metaphors? 3)What are the relations between the verbal and visual metaphors in the translation? 4)What role do multimodal metaphors in target text play in the presentation of Zhuangzi’s philosophical thought?It is revealed in the study that:(1)The source text is rich in conceptual metaphors of six kinds: orientational metaphor,container metaphor,structural metaphor,substance metaphor,personification and discourse metaphor,with a total of455.There are also 310 verbal metaphors and 288 visual metaphors of these six types in the translation.In verbal metaphors,discourse metaphors are the most,and in visual metaphors,the number of personification is much more than others,ranking the first.(2)The conceptual metaphors are interlingually and intersemiotically translated with six methods,namely,equivalence,substitution,conversion,addition,paraphrase and omission.For interlingual translation,the equivalence method is the most frequently employed,and conversion is the least applied.For intersemiotic translation,the omission method is the most utilized and the adoption of substitution is the least.(3)The conceptual metaphors present four types of text-image relations in the target text: subordination,independence,parallel and complementarity,with the first relation of subordination that is dominated by texts and complemented by images.(4)On the whole,most of the discourse metaphor,substance metaphor and personification that best reflect the philosophical thought of Zhuangzi are translated accurately into the target text through the equivalence method,while most of the orientational metaphor and container metaphor that indirectly reflect Zhuangzi’s philosophical thoughts are omitted,especially in the intersemiotic translation.The subordinate relationship presented in the translation makes the image and text work together to enhance the expression effect of the original conceptual metaphor and its Taoist philosophy,which enables them faithfully conveyed in the target text.Under the background of “Chinese culture going out”,this study deeply discusses the multimodal translation of conceptual metaphors in Zhuangzi,which not only provides new insights into the translation of Zhuangzi to better spread the Chinese classic culture but also sheds new light on the further studies of multimodal translation of conceptual metaphors.