A Cognitive Approach To Metaphor Translation In The Analects

As the treasure of Chinese culture, The Analects possesses metaphors with rich connotations which draw much attention of many scholars at home and abroad. It is discovered that a few studies lay emphasis on the metaphor studies from cognitive approach and that few translation studies pay attention to translation of metaphors in The Analects.This study identifies 146 metaphors accounting for 28.5% of the whole analects. Based on Cognitive Metaphor Theory, those metaphors can be categorized into three basic types: structural metaphors which encompass Self-cultivation metaphors, Time metaphors, Human metaphors,“Dao” metaphors, synaesthetic metaphors and other structural metaphors; orientational metaphors which include “up-down” metaphors, “in-out” metaphors, “near-far” metaphors and“center-periphery” metaphors and ontological metaphors which are mainly made up of personified metaphors and objectified metaphors that involve concretization and abstraction. The study makes a tentative study on the mechanism of metaphors from word level, syntactic level and discourse level.In the light of analyzing the mechanism of metaphors in the Analects, with the guidance of Cognitive Metaphor Theory, this study presents the transfer of metaphorical words using corpus-based analysis, conceptual transfer of metaphors on syntactic level and discourse transfer of extended metaphors from three aspects: consistency of the mapping image in the target text and source text, target readers’ acceptance and cultural conveyance. It is discovered that on the word level, when transferring “Dao” metaphors, the translator should retain the metaphoric character to convey the philosophical concept of Chinese culture; the translation of “up-down”metaphors should not only keep the mapping between the spatial concept and non-spatial concept but also add the accurate meaning of the metaphors; the best transfer of “Tian”metaphors should be Chinese pinyin plus Chinese character, which will remind the target readers of that “天” is a culture-specific element of China and make them understand Chinese culture and tradition. On the syntactic level, this study tends to retain the mapping images of metaphors in the transfer of Synaesthetic metaphors, concretization and abstraction. Transfer of sensory mapping in Synaesthetic metaphors, transfer of creating-similarity in concretization and transfer of abstract effect in abstraction should be considered into consideration. On discourse level, the transfer of extended metaphors should not only involve the transfer of conceptual mapping but also take criteria of textuality into consideration, that is to say, the translation of the extended metaphors should not only retain the mapping image of the source text to represent the originalstyle and layout of the discourse but also draw attention to conveying the intention and information of the source text and put target readers into a specific situation to experience the charm of Chinese culture and tradition. It is concluded that whether the metaphor translation is successful or not depends on the transfer of the cognitive values of the metaphor. The rhetoric function of metaphors should not be neglected especially in the translation of extended metaphors.