Metaphor And Its Translation In Ancient Chinese Poetry

Metaphor has always appealed to the attention of scholars both at home and abroad. Traditionally, it is regarded as a device of rhetoric, functioning as a decorative vehicle. Nowadays, metaphor is becoming more and more multidisciplinary concerning psychology, linguistics and other subjects, etc. The importance of metaphor research is on the rise, scholars devote themselves to the study of the basic nature, functions and features of metaphor from different perspectives and in different methodology. The way metaphor works in our daily language and thinking mechanism has been recognized and accepted gradually.Poetry, especially the ancient Chinese poetry is the gem of Chinese culture and civilization. The language of poetry is concise and delicate. Metaphors are systematic, coherent, conventional and universal. Besides, metaphor is of prime composition of poetry. The use of metaphor makes the poetry more vivid, imaginative, and powerful. It decodes the abstract images in a concrete way. Poetry translation work shoulders the primary responsibility of facilitating people from different cultures to understand ancient Chinese poetry. This paper focuses on the importance of metaphor translation in the poetry.Modern cognitive linguistics indicates that metaphor reflects the way we think and behave and reveals the conceptual structure of people. On the basis of conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual blending theory, on the ground of translation theories and principles, this thesis analyzes ancient Chinese poems as well as their English versions so as to find mental patterns of the way people think when they do the translation work. By analyzing the translation versions of Xu Yuanchong, the author also tries to summarize the translation methods the author adopts in his translation versions.The main body of this thesis is divided into five parts. The first part gives us a brief introduction of the idea and purpose, the theoretical background and significance of the thesis. The second part mainly focuses on the literature review of metaphor history and its theoretical development, and we also analyze the principles and strategies of metaphor translation and poetry translation. The third chapter, which is also the theoretical foundation of the fourth chapter, reviews the cognitive linguistic theories such as conceptual metaphor and conceptual blending theory. In this part, the author mainly depicts the process of the two blending processes in both the source language and target language. The fourth chapter is the analysis of the application of how the theory works in the translation process by explaining the metaphor translation in the poetry. The translation versions of Xu Yuanchong will be the major references of this thesis. Moreover, some translation strategies will also be concluded based on the translation versions. The fifth and last chapter will give us a brief conclusion of the paper. Limitations and findings of the thesis will be presented as well in this chapter.