An Interpretation Of The Translation Of Xiehouyu From The Perspective Of Conceptual Integration Theory

Recent years are witnessing the heated culture-related translation studies onaccount of the occurrence of culture turn in the1970s. Culture exchanges amongnations and areas gradually become frequent, thus making the trend of integrationirresistible. In this process, the role of translation is extremely important. Given theinextricable relatedness among culture, translation and language, the introduction oftraditional culture and language pattern of our country to the outside word viatranslation not only carries forward our national culture but also promotes thediversity of the world culture.Xiehouyu, being the quintessence of our language and culture, is usually usedin both daily conversation and literary works among the Chinese people. It is createdby our people in daily life and has a special language form and rich culturalconnotation. Therefore, the study of XHY can transmit our culture effectively as wellas help to enhance our communication with other countries. However, the previousstudies of the translation of XHY are hardly ever carried out from the perspective ofcognitive linguistics, meanwhile the research of translation process is not sufficient.With the ever-accelerated development of Conceptual Integration Theory, anincreasing number of scholars have been engaging in applying it to translation.Translation has been unanimously held as a kind of dynamic conceptual integration by scholars and corresponding translation network models have been proposed.The purpose of this thesis is to explore the translation cognitive process ofXiehouyu under the guidance of Conceptual Integration Theory. The thesis appliesthe method with both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The corpora are selectedfrom Hong Lou Meng, a classic of Chinese literature. The English version of HongLou Meng is selected from the version of Yang Xianyi in China and Hawkes inEnglish. The forming process of translated text is analyzed by four types ofconceptual integration network: frame networks, one-side network, two-side networkand multiple-blend network.This study demonstrated that translation of Xiehouyu is not only a kind oflanguage transformational behavior, but is a cognitive process, namely, it is aconceptual integration cognitive process in translator’s mind. In addition, the studymakes analyses for the translating and proves the feasibility of introducing theconceptual integration network into the translation process study.This study will push forward the study of Xiehouyu translation and thedevelopment of Conceptual Integration Theory itself, providing a certain referencefor cross-disciplinary study.