A Cognitive Mapping Approach To The Translation Of Color Metaphor

Color metahor translation is a cognitive activity in the sense that one tends to explain or understand the abstract concept in terms of the sense of colors. This thesis studies the cognitive mechanism of color metaphor translation and translation procedures from the perspective of cognitive mapping. Metaphor arises from mapping among different cognitive domains, especially the mapping from familiar and easily-understood source domain onto unfamiliar and abstract target domain. And through the mapping, the concepts of the target domain of the abstract concept is understood and expressed in terms of that in the source domain of the color. Translating is a cross-domain mapping activity, which involves the mapping between the source domain of source text and the target domain of target text. When a concept in the source domain does not match that in the target domain, the translator should strive to discover the similarity and association between the tenor of source domain and the vehicle of target domain. Color metaphors present three different mapping models: mapping from color domain to non-color domain, mapping from non-color domain to color domain, and mapping between color domains. It concludes that if SL and TL have the equivalent conceptual metaphor versions, the translator maps the metaphorical expressions onto the equivalent in the target text; if SL and TL share similar conceptual metaphor, the mapping of the similar conceptual metaphorical expressions between the source language and target language can occur in the target text; if there are no corresponding metaphor between SL and TL, a non-metaphorical expressions method can be used.