Metaphorical Thinking And Translation Of Chinese Idioms

Metaphor is traditionally viewed as a kind of figure of speech, that is, a linguistic phenomenon. It is primarily decorative and ornamental in nature. However, in the past few decades, the study of metaphor shows that metaphor is not just a matter of language, that is, of mere words. Metaphorical thinking is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language, but also in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. Idioms are the crystallization of a language. On the whole, they are deep in meaning and rich in rhyme. Moreover, they are not only the carriers of intelligence and wisdom of the people, but also the reflections of the language and its national psyche. Idioms have long been justifiably entitled a highly condensed encyclopedia that is deep in meaning.The writer of this thesis holds that Chinese idioms are rich in metaphorical thinking that manifests its unique national characteristic. The thinking patterns of each nation are the residue of its national culture and the psyche of its people. The underlining structures of these patterns are stable and heritable. Thus it is no doubt important for us to study and translate Chinese idioms, most of which are metaphorical in meaning, to promote the splendid Chinese culture all over the world. As translation is a kind of inter-language and inter-cultural communicative activity, the thesis firstly has a review on the study of metaphors and then explains the importance of Chinese idioms in communication; it aims to analyze the inner structures of Chinese idioms and to thus apply appropriate translating skills to convey them into English. Owing to the different linguistic characteristics and distinctive thinking patterns with Chinese metaphorical thinking in particular, Chinese and English idioms vary in their diction and forms. Therefore, the good translation of idioms is not an easy job to fulfill. To tackle this problem, it is helpful to work out some strategies in translation, because neither literal translation nor translating by paraphrase can bridge the gap of different metaphorical thinking patterns. Therefore, the writer makes an attempt to probe into this field.