A Study On English Translation Of Chinese Synaesthetic Metaphor From The Perspective Of New Spaces Of Conceptual Integration Theory

Initially, Synaesthetic Metaphor is viewed as a neuropsychological phenomenon or a rhetorical device. Then based on the conceptual metaphor of Lakoff and Johnson(1980), many scholars both in China and aboard such as Day(1996), Simon Baron-Cohen(1997), John E.Harrison(1997), Zhao yanfang(2001) and Li Guonan(2001) begin to study Synaesthetic Metaphor from cognitive perspective. The cognitive process of Synaesthetic Metaphor is the cross-space mapping from one sensory to another or more. In other words, if a stimulus occurs in one sensory morality and it will occurs in another later. Synaesthetic Metaphor is mainly the mutual mapping among the five senses and the mapping owns a sensory-ranking which is touch—taste—smell—vision—hearing from the lowest to the highest.Conceptual Integration Theory(CIT) is also known as Conceptual Blending Theory which is put forward by Fauconnier(1997) and Turner(2002) based on mental space theory. The theory breaks down the traditional bound and owns a perfect theoretical system as well as flexible operation mechanism. So, it has aroused a lot of attention from scholars at home and abroad after it is proposed. CIT is a complex theoretical system including four mental spaces and there are cross-domain projections among them. Then, after composition, completion and elaboration, an emergent space will be established.Chinese full-length novel Rice is Su Tong’s representative work. It mainly tells about that a poor farmer Five Dragons married into the rice shop in order to get rid of hunger and poverty. After experiencing numerous storms and three generations’ emotional entanglements, Five Dragons’ personality changes hugely.The famous American sinologist Howard Goldblatt translated the novel into English in 1995 which made Rice attract the readers’ attention at home and aboard. Because the characters in the novel have rich mental activities, there are a large amount of Synaesthetic Metaphors in it.This paper uses new space models including five-space model and six-space model to analyze Synaesthetic Metaphors in Chinese novel Rice and its English version from the perspective of Conceptual Integration Theory. The writer aims to discuss the principles and strategies for the translation of Synaesthetic Metaphor in Chinese contemporary novels and hopes to provide some enlightenment for the Synaesthetic Metaphors of English-Chinese Translation.