A Study Of The Translation Of Metonymies In Classic Tang Poems From The Perspective Of Cognitive Linguistic

The translation of classic Tang Poems has played a vital role in the“Going Global”of Chinese culture.Used profusely in Tang Poems,metonymies bear rhetorical forces that enhance poetic quality and aesthetic values while equally stimulating readers' imaginations.Handling appropriately these metonymies greatly affects the quality of the rendered texts of Tang Poems and helps target-language readers gain a better insight into Chinese traditional culture.However,metonymies are language-specific and elicit discrepancies in the identification of metonymic patterns,the location of the source,and target domains in source and target languages;thus,presenting translators with significant challenges.Metonymic studies have traditionally been conducted from a rhetorical and semantic perspective.The assimilation of a cognitive approach has added a new dimension to the study of metonymies translation in Tang Poems.Nevertheless,upon reviewing the related literature,it was apparent that unfamiliarity with the cognitive approach to metonymic translation resulted in limited systematic research within that field.Currently,there exist some limitations in metonymies translation studies of Classic Tang Poems concerning defining metonymy in accordance with a traditional rhetorical theory,which narrows down the coverage of metonymies.The available data are mainly from some Classic Tang Poem and its diverse translated versions.As such,they do not accurately depict the general state of translating metonymies in Cllassic Tang Poems.Researchers' simply utilizing Conceptual Metonymy Theory to elaborate on the cognitive operations of translators handling metonymies in Tang Poems indicates a unitary approach to the research.The overall research situation leaves much space for our study.The study aims to answer the following three questions:(1)What translation strategies are adapted to render the metonymic items in Classic Tang Poems?What translation orientations are reflected in the translators'application of those strategies?(2)How are the complex metonymies in Classic Tang Poems dealt with during translation?What factors either influence or restrict the translation of the complex metonymies?(3)What is the translator's subjectivity embodied in his translating metonymies throughout Classic Tang Poems?How can the translator realize his subjectivity?To answer the above questions,we employ an embodied cognitive approach to translation and hypothesize that the translation of metonymies in Classic Tang Poems is the outcome of a translator's simultaneous process of metonymic items in a linguistic and cognitive dimension.We adopt a corpus-based approach(the data are comprised of Three Hundred Tang Poems and two different English translations,by Yuanchong XU and Peter Harris)and conduct the study within the Cognitive Analysis Model framed by Conceptual Metonymy Theory,Conceptual Metaphor Theory,and Conceptual Blending Theory.We define metonymy in our study based on the notion that "metonymy is a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity provides mental access to another conceptual entity within the same Idealized Cognitive Model(ICM)" and include into metonymy category all the expressions(words and phrases included)motivated by metonymic thinking within the context of Tang Poems.Based on the above definition,we put forward a Five-step Identification Model of Metonymy and manually label metonymic items in source language texts and their counterparts in target language texts and identify the metonymy types and their respective ICMs.Finally,an observation-description-explanation approach is adopted to analyze the data.The findings are as follows:(1)The strategies of translating the metonymies are a combination of cognitive operations,translation methods and translation techniques employed to express the metonymic items construed in Classic Tang Poems.Based on the analysis of the data,we found that there exist dynamic adjustments of the metonymy types and shifts between the Idealized Cognitive Models activated by the metonymic items in source language texts and their counterparts in target language texts.To deal with the identified metonymic items,one of six approaches can be chosen,including:solely transferring the metonymic vehicle of source language to target language,solely transferring the metonymic target of source language to target language,presenting in the target language the counterparts of both metonymic vehicle and target of source language,replacing the metonymic vehicle in classic Tang Poems by some other metonymic vehicle from source language(both of which share the same metonymic target),substituting the target language-specific metonymic vehicle for the metonymic vehicle of source language,and omitting in the rendered text the metonymic vehicle and target of source language.On the linguistic level in the target language,a translator can employ the corresponding form of the part of speech and syntactic structure of the metonymic item in the source language,convert the part of speech,shift between lexical item and syntactic structure or shift the syntactic level,make appropriate amplification or omission,and adjust the word order in the rendered text;thus revealing or hiding the metonymic items of Classic Tang Poems.The translation strategies of metonymies reflect the translator's translation orientation of domesticating or foreignizing,which in turn exerts,to some extent,influence on the translator's choice of translation methods and techniques.(2)Complex metonymies in the present study include chained metonymy,consisting of multiple mapping,and metaphonymy shaped by the interaction between metaphor and metonymy.Chained metonymy can be managed through diverse methods,including retaining the source domain of the metonymy,or presenting a certain target domain n-1/source domain n-1 or retaining the final target domain.The interaction between metonymy and metaphor in“Metonymy-Metaphor”or“Metaphor-Metonymy”in source language texts could be preserved in the rendered text.Nevertheless,since metaphonymy carries multiple source language cultural information,there remain some cultural voids in the target language.The cultural gaps hinder the reproduction of interaction relations.Consequently,the translator must choose among the elements of "Metonymy-Metaphor" or“Metaphor-Metonymy”,namely converting "Metonymy-Metaphor" or“Metaphor-Metonymy”into either metaphor or metonymy in the rendered text,or omitting the“Metonymy-Metaphor”or“Metaphor-Metonymy”in the target language.The recurrence or omission of complex metonymies in Classic Tang Poems is restricted by the following factors:the translator's sensitivity to complex metonymies,the translation strategies adopted by the translator,and the translator's preference for domesticating or foreignizing translation.Moreover,the intercultural adaptability of the complex metonymies and their appropriateness for target language context restrict the ways in which they are presented in the target language.(3)The rendering of metonymies in Classic Tang Poems reflects the creativity of the translator as well as his passivity,which constitutes the translator's subjectivity.A translator's subjectivity is therefore explicitly realized by his choices of translation strategies and scaffolded conceptually by his conceptual blending.The subjectivity comes from two levels:at a macro-level,the conceptual blending in deconstructing source language text and constructing target language text;at a micro-level,blending conceptually the metonymic items in Classic Tang Poems.The cognitive operations in conceptual blending provide the cognitive mechanism for constructing the translator's subjectivity.It is concluded that translating the metonymies in Classic Tang Poems does not constitute a mere shift amid linguistic symbols or rhetorical levels.These shifts are solely the surface realization of the translator's cognitive operations.Fundamentally,how one translates the metonymies in Classic Tang Poems is the result of his cognitive operations at a conceptual level during the process of his identification of metonymic items in source language texts and the instantiation of those metonymic items in target language texts.