| Metaphor and metaphor translation have been one of the hot topics which attract linguists’ attention. Large amount of studies have been conducted on metaphor since Aristotle, most of which focus on the rhetorical aspect of metaphor. The cognitive function is scarcely involved until the publication of Lakoff & Johnson’s masterpiece Metaphors We Live By, which brought metaphor into the field of cognitive linguistics. Conceptual Metaphor Theory proposed in this book claims that metaphor is not only a form of human language, but more importantly it is a universal way of human action and thought. Conceptual Metaphor Theory has changed the emphasis of researches on metaphor from rhetorical function to its cognitive nature.Studies on political discourses also have a long history, but most of them are done from rhetoric perspective and pragmatic perspective. In recent decades, with the rapid development of cognitive science, more and more scholars are trying to analyze political speeches from the view of metaphor. University students are the future of a country, and their understanding and reception contribute a lot to spreading political views. Therefore, politicians pay great attention to speeches delivered in foreign universities when they publicize their claims abroad. However, these speeches are seldom chosen by political speeches researchers.This thesis is intended to make a contrastive analysis of the conceptual metaphors used in Chinese and English political speeches delivered in foreign universities with the guidance of Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The ultimate purpose of this thesis is to put forward some practical translation strategies, which will benefit the future conceptual metaphor translation. After a careful and systematic investigation on the data, it is found that the main conceptual metaphors identified in selected Chinese and English corpora include Journey Metaphor, Organism Metaphor, War Metaphor, Construction Metaphor, Religion Metaphor and Steelwork Metaphor. Among them, Journey Metaphor, Organism Metaphor, War Metaphor and Construction Metaphor exist both in Chinese and English, while Religion Metaphor is unique to the selected Chinese data and Steelwork Metaphor is unique to the selected English data. As for translation strategies, there are two distinct conditions: when the same conceptual metaphors are involved, foreignization translation i.e. literal translation can be used; when different conceptual metaphors are involved, domestication translation should be adopted and the sub-strategies of domestication---adaptation and conversion can be chosen according to particular cases. |
