Translation Of Metaphors In Classic Chinese Poetry From Conceptual Metaphor Theory Perspective

Generally regarded as an alien expression of language, metaphor is always put into the categoryof rhetoric. Under the influence of rhetoric, stylistics, and structural linguistics, traditional translationtheory of metaphor translation study is generally rhetoric-oriented, which regards metaphortranslation as a rhetorically interlingua conversion. What the translator does is to analyzemetaphorical expressions in the source text and to seek equivalent metaphor expressions with thehope of arriving at an interlingua conversion between source text and target text. By that, thetranslation is but a conversion between two language symbols.From cognitive linguistics, nevertheless, there are obvious shortcomings about putting metaphorsinto the category of rhetoric and about traditional translation study on metaphor translation, namely,the two both neglected the cognitive essence of metaphors and the latter misunderstands the essenceof true translation. According to cognitive linguistics, language occurs in the process of people'scognition towards the outside world and objects are meaningless without people's perception. There isno direct correspondence between language symbols and the external world. And only throughpeople's cognition, can the two connect. Under cognitive linguistics, concepts resulted from people'scognition towards the external world are consistent to relevant language symbols. Thus, according tocognitive linguistics, the essence of translation is a transition of meaning between source and targetlanguage; the same is true with the translation of metaphor. Only when a translation is perceived bythe target readers, can it be regarded as a successful one.Asa branch of cognitive linguistics, Conceptual Metaphor Theory is regarded as a scientific wayfor the study of metaphor, which claims that connotations, meaning or implications expressed bymetaphors have a cognitive basis, are results of a psychological mechanism that one concept domainmaps to another. By this, metaphor translation cannot solely be a rhetorical conversion of languagesymbols. The translator has to strive to find the psychological basis of metaphors, and determinespecific translation strategies in accordance with the working mechanism of specific metaphors.This thesis starts with the origin of metaphor, making a comparison between linguistics andcognitive linguistics on metaphor. Then, a comparative study between traditional translation theory and cognitive translation theory on metaphor translation is conducted, making a conclusion that theessence of translation lies in a transition of meaning. Finally, based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory,together with its working mechanism ? metaphor as a mapping across domains and the essence oftranslation ? a transition of meaning, this thesis studies the translation possibility of Chinese ancientpoetry and put its emphasis on the English translation of metaphorical words and expressions in theseworks, putting forward three translation strategies: 1) equivalent mapping across metaphor domains; 2)domestic mapping of original text domain in the translated text domain; 3) abstraction of mappingsacross metaphor concept domains. It is concluded that the translation strategies as proposed inaccordance with mappings of metaphor concepts are of a great help for improving the C-E translationof metaphor. All the materials are extracted from English Translation of Gems of Yuefu Ballads byProf. Wang Rongpei and English Translation of An Anthology of The Tang Dynasty Poetry by SunDayu.