A Study On The Images In The Metaphor Translation Of Tang Poetry From Palmer's Cultural Linguistics Perspective

Metaphor, for a long time, has been one popular subject in the history of linguistic study. From the original concept that considered metaphor as the figurative method in literature, to the widely used theory of cognitive linguistics, people have already noticed the importance in human language. Without metaphor, language would be boring and its function and efficiency would be greatly reduced. Because of this reason, poetry, one major occasion of metaphor application, has attracted a lot of attention. There are quite a few studies from different aspects. Cultural linguistics, which is created by Gary B. Palmer, is based on cognitive linguistic theory, adds cultural elements into study, and builds up an image-schema theory. His cultural linguistics investigates many aspects of human language and makes further study based on former research. Metaphor, the indispensable part of language, is also analyzed elaborately. This thesis chooses the abundant metaphors in Chinese Tang poetry as the media and uses the theory of Palmer's cultural linguistics to study the function of different culture in language. Chinese poetry, especially Tang poetry, is the embodiment of traditional Chinese culture, so its translation is very important. Different from former study on metaphor in poetry, this thesis focuses more on the usage of images in the metaphor used in Tang poetry with Palmer's cultural linguistics, and tries to find some implications for translation.The main body of this thesis is divided into five parts: Chapter One makes a general survey on metaphor study and specifies the significance of this thesis. Chapter Two introduces the background, emergence, the cognitive background, and the image-schema nature of Palmer's cultural linguistics, and then uses this theory to explain the usage of metaphor in human language. Chapter Three is the application of theory. Different translated versions of Chinese Tang explain the cultural linguistic theory on metaphor translation. For the three different kinds of metaphor used in Tang poetry, different translators choose their own ways to comprehend and interpret. Chapter Four makes a short conclusion based on the analysis and cultural linguistic theory, and sums up three main principles for metaphor translation in Tang poetry. Besides, this part also raises some implications for poetry translation. The last short part makes the main conclusion of the whole thesis, summarizes the major findings, and also points out the limitations and puts forward the aim for further study.