Metaphor Translation In Cross-cultural Background

Lakoff and Johnson had said:” All of the language is metaphorical, and almost all ofthe experience we done in ever day are metaphors.” We can say that metaphor is acognitive approach of the objective world and a kind of cultural response. Thelanguage is the carrier of culture, which translate one language into another languageto spread the language cultural information. This paper intends to reflect themetaphorical phenomenon of cultural information of their respective comparativestudy through Japanese and Chinese languages, and will analyze the mostrepresentative Japanese metaphorical language-saying, idioms, the translation ofidioms and principle of Chinese shallowly.The paper is divided into four parts.The first part is the introduction. This part expounds the researching purpose andmeaning. Then we introduce the research of metaphor scholars both at home andabroad, as well as the metaphor study, recently results, etc.The second part begins with the metaphor from Chinese and Japanese parable of thedefinition and classification, the concept of metaphor, metaphor and the relation ofoverstepping languages to study.The third part through the contrast between the two countries, the cultural factors ofthe two languages’ metaphor in effect, analyzes the Japanese-Chinese metaphor’ssocial and historical cultural background, religious and cultural beliefs, naturalculture, and people’s life habits of several aspects. Those factors provide thatmetaphor is a kind of cultural phenomenon.Culture comes from People’s Daily lifeand development, is a national common values and habitual behavior. This nationalculture will be from national language of expression. Different nationalitymetaphorical from language to the content are different, this is because every nationin physical environment, its historical habits, and the production and living way ofthinking is different. From the national view of nature, society, and the outlook onlife we can see that the metaphorical language is with national characteristics.Therefore, the relationship between metaphorical language and language culture is very close.The fourth part is the most important one in this paper, it put the metaphor, cultureand translation relates together. First it explains that the translation of the standard isdiverse and the translation process is complicated. And the influence of culturalfactors of translation is tremendous. Because the metaphor and culture, translationand culture, is inseparable from the culture, so culture factors on the metaphortranslation will be a decisive impact. Then we discuss several metaphor translationstrategies, such as domesticated, alienation, replacement, etc. Most of the Japaneseidiom, the proverb, have very strong metaphorical characteristics, the authorsummarized recent published about Japanese idiom, proverbs, idioms dictionary,gathered to obvious metaphorical Japanese idiom, the proverb, the translation ofidioms methods to say culture influence on the metaphorical language translation.However, because of the difference of Chinese dictionary, the differences ofcompilation editor’s thinking, the author thinks that there are many metaphoricallanguage translation that are not very appropriate, so when compare with thedictionary translation and comparison, the author joined own opinions. Finally, makebrief summary about the relation between foreignization and domestication principle,foreignization and domestication in essence is the unity of the opposites. When theyare used in translation, should be used alternately, should not be limited withtranslation principles, and the progress of the society, the language culturedevelopment make the principle of translation is not only the principle offoreignizing and domesticating, but also make more translation methods andprinciples in translation is used.Finally, is the ending part, this part summarized the research contents.