A Frame-Theory-Based Study Of Engligh & Chinese Numerical Idioms And Their Translation

With the interdisciplinary development of translation, there have gradually appeared translation studies from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. Translation, as a practical activity in human being's life, relates closely to the cognitive understanding of languages. Numerical idioms are the special language forms which reflect the colorfulness and richness of language. Their formation and development are inevitably associated with social, economic and cultural backgrounds. Accordingly, the translation of numerical idioms involves more than a simple transformation between two languages and requires an overall and correct cognitive understanding of their differences in English and Chinese. This thesis, from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, attempts to give a cognitive interpretation of the differences after a comparative analysis of English & Chinese numerical idioms and discuss their translation on the basis of Charles Fillmore's frame theory.According to Charles Fillmore, frame theory is a cognitive theory used to study the meaning of words and syntactic structures. To understand any concept, one needs to know other related concepts in the same frame. This theory puts more emphasis on the significance of comprehension in the use of languages. As Charles Fillmore puts it, the cognitive function of frame serves as a trigger which to a large extent can help understand the language expressions once one role in a frame is mentioned.This thesis makes the present study of numerical idioms and their translation with frame theory as its theoretical basis. The introduction describes the study background, aim, significance and structure of the thesis. The first chapter makes an overall review of numerical idioms and current translation studies and studies of frame theory. The second chapter introduces frame theory and its role in analyzing linguistic phenomena and translation studies. The third chapter employs frame theory to analyze the English & Chinese numerical idioms and give the cognitive interpretation of their differences. The fourth chapter discusses the translation of numerical idioms based on frame theory and the frame transformation between English and Chinese. In the last part the conclusion of this thesis is presented about the findings and limitations.The translation of numerical idioms is a hard nut for translators. Though scholars have never failed to make studies of them, the discussion based on cognitive frame theory is a new attempt at present, from which a more rational interpretation of translation, it is hoped, can be found from the cognitive perspective.