Mataphor Translation Of Children’s Literature From The Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory:A Comparative Case Study Of The Two Chinese Versions Of The Wind In The Willows

Conceptual Metaphor Theory, formulated by Lakoff and Johnson in 1980, rejects the traditional view of metaphor being a rhetorical phenomenon, and redefines it as a cognitive instrument by which humans perceive, categorize and conceptualize the world around them. The cognitive turn of metaphor studies, initiated by CMT, offers an innovative research perspective to inspect metaphor translation, which, according to the theory, is more a process of reproducing in the target language the mapping relations of the original metaphor than a simple transplantation of the concept carried in the original metaphor on the linguistic level.Metaphor is one of the commonest figures of speech in children’s literature, but its translation is not as effortless as it might seem to be, for translators have to take into account not only factors such as linguistic, cultural and social differences, but also factors like children’s limited linguistic level and cognitive abilities, which altogether pose a formidable challenge to translators engaged in translation of children’s literature.The Wind in the Willow, a classic masterpiece of British children’s literature written by Kenneth Graham, enjoys a world-wide reputation in its depiction of the beautiful and tranquil British countryside and its narration of a series of bewitching and breathtaking stories around its four little animal characters. Since its first Chinese version’s publication in 1989, TWITW has been welcomed and commended by Chinese children and their parents, and up to now, there have been a growing number of Chinese translated versions in the Chinese market of children’s literature.With a comparative study of two Chinese versions of TWITW, this thesis attempts to construct a cognitive metaphor translation model through exploring the cognitive process translators go through when dealing with metaphors from the perspective of Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The cognitive metaphor translation process is specified as including three steps: metaphor comprehension, metaphor adjustment and metaphor reconstruction. By analyzing metaphor examples extracted from TWITW, metaphor translation techniques in childen’s literature are summarized. The thesis raises previous analyses of metaphor translation from the linguistic and cultural level to the cognitive level, and delves into the influence the cognitive process exerts on translator’s selection of translation techniques, which is of great theoretical and practical value to the comprehension of children’s literature, translator’s decisions of certain techniques and expressions. Hopefully, this study will generate some instructions and inspirations to future studies on metaphor translation of childen’s literature.