On The Translation Of Emotion Metaphors In Hong Lou Meng

With the development of cognitive science since the1970s, Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptualmetaphor theory has broadened the scope of metaphor study from a cognitive view. However,research on metaphor translation is not commensurate with the development of metaphor study andhas been in a secondary position regardless of its significance as the most basic and special issues intranslation. Emotion is an important aspect of human experience. Many scholars at home and abroadhave explored emotion metaphors from various perspectives. However, most of the research are basedon limited examples, and few of them based on a relatively long text.The paper first reviews the research on metaphor and emotion metaphor, metaphor translation aswell as the translation of Hong Lou Meng. Then, strategies of translation and research methodologyare introduced. After being partially translated by several scholars, Hong Lou Meng now has twocomplete English translations: The Story of the Stone translated by David Hawkes and A Dream ofRed Mansions by Yang Hsien-yi and his wife Gladys Yang. Twenty chapters out of the first eightychapters of Hong Lou Meng selected as the systematic sampling to do research on the translation ofemotion metaphor. Generally speaking, emotion metaphors are divided into five types:"happiness","sadness","anger","happiness" and "love". For reasons of space and time, this research focuses on285samples of metaphors related to "anger" in the selected20chapters to study translation ofemotion metaphors. Qualitative and quantitative approaches are adopted and an analysis of thetranslation strategies of metaphors related to "anger" is made.By comparing and contrasting the two different English versions by the Yangs and Hawkes, thisthesis attempts to explore the characteristics and translation strategies of emotion metaphors. Inaddition, regularities of translating metaphors related to "anger" are investigated. The finding showsthat in the two different English versions by the Yangs and Hawkes, foreignization accounts for31.93%and39.30%while domestication accounts68.07%and60.70%respectively. Finally tentativeexplanations for the translation strategies are provided from four perspectives: linguistic factors,cultural factors, contextual factors and translator’s subjectivity.