A Descriptive Study On The Translation Of Ontological Metaphors In Tang Poems

The 1970s witnessed the transitions of metaphor study from the rhetorical period to the cognitive era. With the introduction of conceptual metaphor theory proposed by Lakoff and other cognitive metaphor researchers, the connection between metaphor expression and conceptual metaphor was gradually recognized and accepted by scholars. Such cognitive metaphor study has, in turn, shed light on the research on the translation of metaphors, which enables scholars to examine the reproduction of conceptual metaphor in the process of translation compared with the previously popular literal equivalence.On the basis of conceptual metaphor theory, Lakoff divides metaphors into three categories, namely structural metaphors, orientational metaphors and ontological metaphors. Based on the conceptual metaphor theory, this paper selects 300 Tang Poems translated by Xu Yuanzhong as a material for case study and attempts to find out relevant strategies for translating ontological metaphors through a descriptive study on all ontological metaphors in the book.Chapter one is a brief introduction of this research. Chapter two reviews the study on poetry translation and on metaphor in both China and the West while introducing relevant study on Xu Yuanzhong and his translation works. Chapter three carries out a case study on Xu Yuanzhong's 300 Tang Poems, in which the ontological metaphors are categorized and their translation analyzed to find out the strategies of translating various categories of ontological metaphors. Chapter four analyzes the cases that failed to reproduce the conceptual metaphor of the original metaphor in translation and attempts to tell when the conceptual metaphor will be substituted or omitted rather than translated. Chapter five arrives at the conclusion and points out the limitations of this research and suggestions for further research.