Translating Metaphors In Different Cultural Contexts

Research on metaphor has a time-honored history. Metaphor, which carries a richcultural connotation, is not only a linguistic phenomenon, but also a way of thinking.Translators should adopt different translation strategies in line with different culturalcontexts.In this thesis, I am going to probe into the translation of metaphors with theChinese-to-English translation of Britain as I know（Excerpt）in illustration. First I willanalyze the characteristics of the source text and the problems emerged during thetranslation. Then I point out that the most challenging difficulty of translating this text liesin the fact that the text involves metaphors in different cultural contexts. Culturaldifferences have a great influence on metaphor translation. In the meantime, a specific casestudy is presented by discussing the cognition and relevant translation methods ofmetaphors in different cultural contexts from the aspects of the phrasal level and the textuallevel. Finally, I try to get a deeper understanding of metaphor translation in order to betterdeliver the cultural connotations of metaphors in the source text and to achieve the optimaleffect of cross-cultural communication.The case study is conducted with a view to enhancing translators’ awareness ofdifficulties and values involved in metaphor translation. It is argued that more effortsshould be devoted to metaphor translation.