A Cognitive Study On The Translation Of Metaphors In Tao Te Ching

As the most representative masterpiece of Taoist school, Tao Te Ching contains rich contents, including worldly principles, philosophical values, political views, and cosmology. Its profoundness has attracted a lot of scholars'attention and they began to study and interpret it. Among Tao Te Ching's English versions, Arthur Waley's version(Waley's version) and Xu Yuanchong's version(Xu's version) enjoyed considerable reputation.Cognitive Linguistics underlines that metaphor is a way of thinking, that is, human beings use a more familiar concept to explain or understand another abstract or alien concept. There are numerous metaphors in Tao Te Ching which have become the precious studying samples for metaphorical research. However, few investigate the basic cognitive motivation behind the differences occurring in metaphor translations in concrete and operatable dimensions.It is well-known that translation is creative rewriting and translator's creativity and subjectivity cannot be denied in the process of translation. The comprehension of Hamlet varies from person to person. So does the translation of the ST(Source Text). As the main body of consciousness, we human beings reflect the objective reality consciously and actively. It is the translator's subjectivity that leads to the differences of the translation and only by taking translators'various ways of construal into consideration can lexical and syntactic divergences occurring in translations be feasibly explained.This thesis draws upon the exemplary materials translated by Xu Xuanchong (2003)'s and Arthur Waley(1998)'s English versions of Tao Te Ching together with Tao Te Ching's Chinese version Lao Zi Jin Zhu Jin Yi edited by Chen Guying(2003), and carries out a comparative analysis and systematic study on Tao Te Ching's seven metaphorical themes. By doing this, the author finds the differences mainly lie in the lexical level and syntactic structures. Taking differences occurring in Tao Te Ching's metaphor translations as a sticking point, this paper takes the theory of construal as its theoretical basis and construal dimensions(i.e.scope and background, specificity, perspective and prominence) as its theoretical perspectives, discussing the great explanatory power of constural operation to translation differences between Chinese translator and Western translator. Translators' subjectivity influence their different choices of words and sentence structures, resulting in various styles of English translated versions.It is proved that principles and methodologies of Cognitive Linguistics provide a new angle to analyzing translators'subjectivity and evaluating the translation strategies used by the translators.