Cognitive Metaphor Theory And Metaphor Translation Strategies

The text for translation in the thesis is an excerpt of the novel The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (1754) by Henry Fielding (1707-1754).This thesis is based on the cognitive metaphor theory and the linguistic hypothesis of cognitive metaphor. First, this thesis gives a brief introduction of cognitive metaphors. Second, it discusses the grounding process of cognitive metaphors and the conceptual metaphors within them. Some metaphors come from the common experience of human being and deeply hide in our daily languages. Such metaphors are relatively easy to translate. However, there is a large portion of metaphors come into being because writer’s own experience which include more personal details and imagination. This makes them relatively difficult to translate. At last, this thesis shed some light on how to analyze metaphors during translation activity. In addition, three strategies are proposed in this paper.Translation strategies hereby can be categorized into three kinds:literal translation, horizontal move and vertical move. The translation analysis is made on examples taken from The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon. The thesis analyzes examples by translating them using three different strategies, and comparing the results. Through translation and comparison, the thesis concludes in English-Chinese translation, the cognitive metaphor awareness should be given such priority that metaphors could be recognized and analyzed before starting translation and metaphors shall be found and located during the translation activity.