On Preserving Cultural Features In Metaphor Translation

Metaphors exist widely in languages. In most of what we read—political speeches, articles on international affairs, letters to friends, expressions of opinion, fiction, poetry, drama, advertisements, essays in which we invite other people to share our experiences and evaluation of life—and in nearly everything we write, metaphor is a primary device of expression. It is no mere decoration. It often represents not only the most compact and vigorous way of saying a thing, but also the only way in which the particular thing can be said at all.Studies on metaphor can date back to Aristotle, and metaphor has remained a heated topic for scholars since then, and with the passage of time the study of metaphor has exceeded the traditional linguistic confinement to a new stage of interdisciplinary research. But in contrast to the voluminous literature on metaphor in the field of literary criticism and rhetoric, translation theorists have largely neglected the translation of metaphor, coupled with the fact that "translation is probably the most complex type of event in the history of the cosmos".Translating is a complex and fascinating task. Translation circle has reached some consensus on cross-cultural nature of translation, and their attention has been shifted from emphasis on linguistic transfer towards more emphasis on cultural transmission. As each people have their own mode of living and thinking, the metaphorical language used by this people must be fully saturated with cultural connotations peculiar to it. So, cultural divergence makes translation of metaphor all the more demanding apart from difficulties arising from linguistic divergence common to all translation endeavors.This thesis attempts to probe into the translation of metaphor from the cultural perspective, maintaining that foreignization is a preferred policy given the great necessity of preserving cultural features reflected by metaphors. This author proposes some strategies in handling metaphor translation, and what is original about this author's strategies is the guiding principle of image preservation, considering domestication method will cause loss of alien features while extreme foreigmzation has turned out extremely difficult as English and Chinese are languages with conspicuous divergences. By preserving cultural images in metaphor expressions, cultural features are well retained, cultural exchanges well conducted.The methodology used in the paper is by and large qualitative, with inserted case study when the need to illustrate an argument presents itself in the text. The paper has answered questions raised in the beginning of the paper, concluding that it is feasible to retain cultural features embedded in metaphors by following strategies of image preservation.