A Cognitive Analysis On The Translation Of Basic Color Terms In Chinese

This thesis studies the translation of basic color terms in Chinese from the perspective ofConceptual Metaphor Theory in Cognitive Linguistics and translation strategies.In Chinese, there are a plenty of color terms with metaphorical meanings. Due to theinfluence of history and culture, many color terms derive extended meanings or metaphoricalmeanings, then the metaphorical feature of color terms gradually come out. The metaphoricalfeature of color terms is to regard the color domain as source domain, and map the image ofcolor domain onto non-color domain or abstract domain, so as to make us comprehend andthink through the concepts of color terms.Both in English and Chinese, the studies on metaphor have a long history. At first,metaphor was not considered in the cognitive level, so it often represents the process of onething refers to other things. While, this thinking mode is not comprehensive, so in1980,metaphor from the perspective of cognition was first put forward by Lakoff and Johnson.They pointed out that metaphor is not only a kind of rhetorical device. In their bookMetaphors We Live by, metaphor refers to the arising from mapping among different cognitivedomains, especially the mapping from familiar and easily-understood source domain ontounfamiliar and abstract target domain. The main theory about metaphor in this book is theConceptual Metaphor Theory.At the same time, translating is a cross-domain mapping activity, which involves themapping between the source domain of source text and the target domain of target text and ithas been proved that the practicability of application of the CMT into translation.Based on the theories, this thesis is divided into four chapters.In chapter one, the definitions of basic color term are introduced, among which Berlinand Kay distinguish11basic color terms which are black, white, red, green, yellow, blue,brown, purple, pink, orange, grey. The scholars in China also have some further studies in thisarea. Nowadays, the official basic color terms are black, white, and red, green, blue. However,in Chinese, the color yellow plays an important role, so this thesis adds yellow to the abovebasic color terms, and analyze the six color terms in the following chapters.Chapter two is the theoretical framework which focuses on the metaphor and theConceptual Metaphor Theory. First, the definition of metaphor is analyzed from thetraditional perspectives and cognitive perspectives respectively. The traditional views on metaphor are more rhetorical. While the cognitive perspective views metaphor in a cognitiveway with its important theory: Conceptual Metaphor Theory to comprehend the meaning ofmetaphors. In this part, the definition of CMT and working mechanism are listed. Then greatattention is paid on the three kinds of metaphors: structural metaphor, ontological metaphorand orientational metaphor and two principles: systematicity and cultural coherence.In chapter three, three kinds of metaphors are applied to analyze the meaning of six basiccolor metaphors which are black, white, red, green, blue and yellow. For the prevalence ofstructural metaphors in language, this part emphasizes the using of structural metaphors.Chapter four applies two principles of CMT to guide the translation of basic color terms.The principle of systematicity divides the translation into three situations which are colordomains in Chinese mapped on same color domains in English; color domains in Chinesemapped on other color domains in English; color domains in Chinese mapped on non-colordomains in English. Then under the guidance of cultural coherence, five strategies are appliedto the translation of metaphorical expressions of color terms.