A Translation Study On Conceptual Metaphors Of "深" And "浅"

The research on Metaphor has been of great interest to many rhetoricians and linguists. In 1980, Metaphors we live by written by Lakoff and Johnson has drawn many people's attention and provided metaphor study with the cognitive perspective. Cognitive linguists, consider metaphor to be cognitive in nature and metaphors as being powerful cognitive tools for our conceptualization of abstract categories. In other words, we understand and express the abstract world through metaphors. Metaphors in languages are universal and the translation of metaphors becomes a hot topic as a result. The cross-linguistic and cross-cultural researches on metaphors are quite necessary and indispensable for their translation study.This thesis is a discussion of metaphor translation carried out within the framework of conceptual metaphor from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. It is based on the bilingual corpus from Peking University. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses are adopted in this research. The comparative studies on conceptual metaphors of"æ·±"/"æµ…"and DEEP / SHALLOW are the foundation for their translation research, which indicates:Firstly, there are several projected domains (Time Domain, Color Domain, Emotion Domain, Knowledge / Intellect Domain, Degree Domain, etc.) shared by the two pairs of concepts. There are some domains existing in one language but absent in another, which manifest that the same concept is conceptualized with similarities and differences in different language systems. The metaphorical extensions of"æ·±"and DEEP concepts both enjoy a higher frequency and a variety of wider usage than those of"æµ…"and SHALLOW concepts. Both"æ·±"and DEEP are positive and marked, while"æµ…"and SHALLOW are passive and unmarked. It is known that positive and marked concepts can be used in more language situations. The similarities and differences reflect the common features of peoples'modes of thinking and also the cultural and environmental differences respectively.Secondly, the research on translation has been divided into two parts, namely, the original domain and projected domains. The latter has been classified into three types in accordance with the correspondence degree reflected in the bilingual corpus. In the original domain, literal translation is the most common but not the exclusive approach, which is mainly because of the variety of language systems. In projected domains, both literal translation (retaining metaphors) and free translation (replacing the SL image with another established TL image, non-metaphorical expressions, namely, converting metaphor to sense, substituting, omitting, etc.) are adopted. Generally, the higher the degree of correspondence between the concepts, the more frequent is the adoption in literal translation. Free translation is very popular especially in the projected domains with low degree of correspondence. The statistic results show high frequency of literal translation in each projected domain, which indicates: (1) The conceptualizations of"æ·±"/"æµ…"and DEEP/ SHALLOW are quite similar in the two language systems; (2) People are likely to adopt analogy method to image and link together the two concepts which are corresponding with each other in original domain. Additionally, transliteration and fixed expressions are adopted in some cases.Thirdly, the comparisons between the senses of the concepts in dictionaries and the corpus have obviously indicated that the senses collected in corpus are a little bit more than those in dictionaries. That is to say, language is developing through the interaction with human beings and translation study must follow the development of languages since they are in the dynamic process of development.