A Metaphorical Approach To Translation

Most of our translation theories before the 1990s had been focused on static comparisons of differences between linguistic forms, literary styles and cultures, and few had explored the process of translation from a psychological or cognitive view. In other words, the previous translation studies neglected the fact that translation is in essence a complicated psychological activity.Contemporary studies on metaphor treat metaphor as a conceptual phenomenon rather than a figure of speech, and explore the workings of metaphor. The most influential and powerful theories are Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) by Lakoff & Johnson and Blending Theory (BT) by Fauconnier & Turner.Metaphor and translation have much in common, which probably attributes to the fact that there is an intrinsic relationship between them as activities of thinking. Based on CMT and BT, this thesis discusses the feasibility of establishing a metaphorical translation theory and introduces a metaphorical approach to translation.Apart from Introduction and Conclusion, this thesis consists of three chapters.Chapter 1 makes a brief analysis of the status quo of translatology in China and finds out a great disparity between Chinese and western translatology, which is the inevitable outcome of the disparity between Chinese and western linguistic studies. In this thesis, we argue that we can benefit much from the latest achievements in linguistic studies to construct a new translation theory.Chapter 2 presents a detailed description of the theoretical bases of the thesis, CMT and BT, and further points out that CMT is static whereas BT is on-line, and that they are complementary.Chapter 3 discusses the feasibility of constructing a metaphorical translation theory and, based on BT, introduces a metaphoricalapproach to translation. Translation is a complicated psychological activity involving three procedures: de-integration, projection and integration or blending. The conceptual event, integrated from the source text, is projected onto the generic space, and then, as an input, integrated or blended with the target syntax and other inputs into the target text. Integration or blending has three stages: composition, completion and elaboration. From this perspective, the unit of translation is the minimal conceptual event, and the minimum criteria of translation are 'faithfulness - to be faithful to the conceptual events' and 'expressiveness - to be natural in language'. Traditional translation studies on a basis of static comparisons at the level of linguistic forms regard translation as a one-way projection, which are called 'conceptual metaphorical translation theories' in this thesis. 'Conceptual metaphorical translation theories' work only under frame networks and single-framing networks, whereas 'blending metaphorical translation theories' work under all the four types of networks: frame, single-framing, one-sided and two-sided networks. 'Conceptual metaphorical translation theories', taking the partial for the whole, result in such never-ending controversies over literal VS free translation, domestication VS foreignization, and translatability VS untranslatability, which can be settled in 'blending metaphorical translation theories'. 'Conceptual metaphorical translation theories' are special cases of 'blending metaphorical translation theories', the two of which we generalize into 'metaphorical translation theories' in this thesis.