Translation Of Metaphoric Idioms

Metaphoric idioms, or conventionalized multiword expressions, are abundantboth in Chinese and in English. Although there are similarities between correspondingexpressions in the two languages, differences between them are also obvious. As weall know that there are striking differences between any two cultures involved, whichmay result in difficulties in translation and cultural exchange. People with differentcultural backgrounds have distinctive cognitive models which can be reflected bylanguages. Because of the discrepancies of cognitive models and cultural features,Chinese idioms and English idioms tend to employ distinctive images to representmetaphoric idioms. Thus it causes translating problems in translation.And this paper is attempted to account for the causes and intrinsic mechanismsof the similarities and differences in the construction of Chinese and English idiomsby taking advantage of the notion of "Idealized Cognitive Models" proposed byLakoff (1987), and the Conceptual Blending Theory put forward by Fauconnier (1997)and Fauconnier & Turner (2002). And by analyzing the homogeneity andheterogeneity between the English idioms and Chinese idioms, we can see thecharacteristics in the use of metaphors and image schematic structures in bothlanguages, and thus we can deal with the differences in translating.Domestication and foreignization, namely free translation and literal translationare two disputed translating methods in translating a source language. When andwhere we should use the method of domestication or foreignization has long been acontroversial problem. In this paper, we have come up with the methods to translatethe inequivalent metaphoric idioms in accordance with their intrinsic cognitivemechanisms.