A Study Of English-Chinese Lyrics Translation From The Perspective Of Cognitive Linguistics

Nowadays, a large number of English songs are overwhelmingly swarming intoChina. In spite of the fact that they have been received popularly in China for a verylong time, research findings concerning English-Chinese lyrics translation have beenscarcely available. Besides, most of these researches concentrate on translationtheories and musical elements, such as, melody, rhyme, and style, and few scholarsprobe into it with cognitive views. In view of the significant effect lyrics translationhas on the prevalence of English songs, and the inadequate research efforts mentionedabove, this thesis attempts to analyze English-Chinese lyrics translation from theperspective of cognitive linguistics.Guided by cognitive linguistic theories, this thesis conducts a comparativelycomprehensive analysis of English-Chinese lyrics translation from four specificcognitive perspectives: windowing of attention, conceptual metaphor, figure/groundsegregation and iconicity.Talmy first raised the notion of “windowing of attention”. In lyrics translation, inorder to accord with the source music, one or more parts will be windowed forattention while others may be gapped. This thesis makes a relatively more detailedstudy of English-Chinese lyrics translation from two kinds of windowing, pathwindowing and causal-chain windowing. Based on Slobin’s trichotomic typology,English is treated as a satellite-framed language while Chinese anequipollently-framed language. As a result, the author analyzes diction differences inEnglish-Chinese lyrics translation.Conceptual metaphor is ubiquitous in everyday life, and metaphorical expressionsare pervasive in lyrics. Based on Zoltán K vecses’s classification of conceptualmetaphor, this thesis executes an analysis of structural metaphor, ontologicalmetaphor and orientational metaphor in lyrics translation. What’s more, the authorstudies “mixed metaphor”, namely, the mixed application of two or more conceptualmetaphors in the same context, the conclusion is thus proposed that inEnglish-Chinese translation, translators should be careful to avoid mixed metaphor. Figure/ground segregation, another important theory in cognitive linguistics, isused in the study of lyrics, and this thesis focuses on the elaboration ofEnglish-Chinese lyrics translation from the carriers and positions of figure andground in English and Chinese versions.According to Perice’s classification, imagic iconicity, diagrammatic iconicity andmetaphorical iconicity are proposed. This thesis gives a detailed analysis of imagiciconicity and diagrammatic iconicity in English-Chinese lyrics translation, in whichsome strategies, such as onomatopoeias and the rhetorical device of repetition, arepresented.This thesis mainly carries out case analysis of lyrics in English songs, aiming toexplore the instructive function of cognitive linguistics and offer a tentative approachto English-Chinese lyrics translation.