On Animal Metaphor Translation In Shying From The Cognitive Perspective

The study of metaphor can be dated to Aristotle. In traditional views, metaphor is nothing but a figure of speech and a decoration of style. But since Lakoff and Johnson co-published their masterpiece Metaphors We Live By (1980), metaphor is redefined from cognitive perspective, and thus a "metaphoric revolution" happened. Lakoff thinks that our knowledge of the outside world is based on bodily experience, and metaphor belongs to conceptual system. Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life. It is not only a figure of speech, but more importantly, a way of thinking. Metaphor is actually a mapping system, and we understand entities in target domain in terms of those in source domain. From the very beginning when humans came to the world, animals have been playing an indispensable part in people’s life. Humans and animals could not survive without each other. In the process of dealing with animals, people gradually gain more knowledge of animals and tend to use animals to refer to other human-related things; thus animal metaphor is created.Shijing, the first anthology of poems in ancient China, contains305pieces of poems. It is a mirror of people’s life and work in pre-Qin times. Since people at that time relied heavily on animals, so we can find many animal expressions in this anthology. This thesis collected177animal metaphors in Shijing, with Xu Yuanchong’s Book of Poetry (1993) and James Legge’s The She King (2011) as its research object. The author classified the animal metaphors into3categories:primitive worship, human emotions, and human characteristics, and then cited38typical examples to analyze. Then the thesis tries to find out the similarities and differences between James Legge’s version and Xu Yuanchong’s version in their translation methods, and examine factors influencing their translations.The present study shows that both James Legge and Xu Yuanchong adopted foreignizing and domesticating strategies, and the foreignizing strategy takes up the dominant position. But more specifically, James Legge used foreignizing strategy more frequently than Xu Yuanchong did. He for most part adopted scholarly word-for-word translation; while Xu’s version is a combination of beauty in form, sound and sense. In order to achieve his translation goals, Xu Yuanchong adopted more various translation methods than Legge did. The reasons can be found in their personal background, their translation purposes and their intended readers. James Legge is a British missionary in China. For him, the translation of Shijing is not for literary or aesthetic reason. His only purpose is to help more missionaries know more about Chinese cultures, especially Confucianism. Professor Xu Yuanchong is a Chinese scholar and translator. For him, as a Chinese scholar, Shijing is not only a collection of Confucianism, but also an album of beautiful poems, with charming flavor. His intended readers are ordinary westerners who are unfamiliar with China. He translates this book not only for letting westerners know Chinese culture, but also for the appreciation of the beautiful poems.This thesis enriches the study of animal metaphor and gives inspiration to the future animal metaphor study, but it only studies animal metaphors in Shijing and it is far less than enough. More researches in this field are needed in the future.