Translatability And Translation Techniques Of English Metaphors

Metaphor, as a special linguistic phenomenon, shows a high frequency in both our daily lives and literary works. Given the differences between the East and the West in historical and cultural traditions,customs, social life and so on, metaphors of different cultural backgrounds usually embody some special cultural connotations,which means that correct understanding of a metaphor should take both its literal meaning and social culture behind it into consideration, ensuring that metaphor translation is both faithful and smooth.All texts translated here are chosen from well-known foreign websites. This paper first analyzes relevant researches concerning metaphor in both abroad and domestic and tries to discuss metaphor translation in economic news in English from the point of translatability.The author believes that metaphors in economic news in English are translatable, but, for all differences existing between Chinese and English,sometimes it is difficult for the translator to find a corresponding term in targeted text, which brings about limits of translatability.This paper will first conduct analyses about some basic aspects of a metaphor like its definition and lay a foundation for later discussions of metaphor translation so as to gain a better understanding of its currentsituation; then, combined with the author’s translation practices about English economic news, it will analyze factors hindering the translation of metaphors from the perspectives of linguistic difference and cultural difference; and next it will put forward some major translation strategies to narrow or compensate the gap caused by those limited factors through specific studies of translation practices. Finally, the paper, after sum-up of the whole study, will reach its conclusion: metaphor in English economic news, difficult to understand as it is, is at large translatable and translators can play an active role in choosing proper translation strategies to ensure the faithfulness and smoothness of metaphor translation.