A Cognitive Approach To Metaphor Translation In Cultural Perspective

The study of metaphor has gone through more than two thousand years. The traditional method of metaphor study was confined to the field of rhetoric. In this method, metaphor was considered as a figure of speech. Metaphor was not given the due attention. With the development of cognitive linguistics, people's understanding of metaphor was deepened. In the book Metaphors We Live By written by Lakoff & Johnson, the writer contended that metaphor is actually omnipresent. The publication of this book symbolized the beginning of metaphor study in the cognitive point of view. In the eyes of these researchers, metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon, more importantly, it is"pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action".Metaphor is often used during the communication of people in different cultural backgrounds, thus the translation of metaphor is of great importance. In this thesis, we first give the definition of metaphor and a theoretical review of metaphor study both at home and abroad. Then we introduce and discuss in detail the conceptual metaphor theory(CMT ) put forward by Lakoff and Johnson and blending theory(BT) proposed by Fauconnier and Turner, together with their respective working mechanisms. Next, we explore the relationship between metaphor and culture as well as the various cultural elements that affect metaphor translation in certain aspects. Finally, the CMT and BT are applied to metaphor translation by demonstrating the cognitive processes in translating metaphors and the application in concrete translation is discussed by introducing several translation methods.The thesis attempts to explore metaphor translation strategies based on a cognitive approach and culture models. Metaphor embodies rich cultural connotations, so in the process of metaphor translation, we should pay attention to cultural differences. To sum up, this is a study of metaphor translation between English and Chinese carried out within the framework of cognitive linguistics in culture perspective.