On Translation Strategies Of Metaphors In Yang Xianyi’s Call To Arms And Wandering From The Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Lu Xun is a famous writer,thinker and revolutionary in China,whose novels greatly reflect the reality of China and characteristic of Chinese people.He is very good at portraying characters and describing social environment at that time.However,many readers can not understand his novels,especially the metaphorical expressions.As world-known translators,Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang translate a lot of Chinese classics,among which Call to Arms,Wandering,and Old Tales Retold by Lu Xun are included.Their translation works are well received at home and abroad.This thesis takes the Conceptual Metaphor Theory,proposed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson as the theoretical framework.By analyzing and integrating the representative metaphors,including name and appellation metaphors,color metaphors and human body metaphors in Call to Arms and Wandering,this thesis explores the translation strategies of the three kinds of metaphors.Through collecting and analyzing examples of name and appellation metaphors in Call to Arms and Wandering,the author concludes six ways of constructing name and appellation metaphors,namely homophonic name and appellation,polysemy name and appellation,name and appellation with expectations,names and appellation based on physical features,names and appellation based on occupation,as well as names based on Yin-Yang and five elements.Through these examples,the author concludes two kinds of strategies of name and appellation metaphors,including literal translation and free translation.As the name and appellation metaphors have their own features,three specific methods are covered,namely transliteration,interpretation and annotation to indicate the characteristics and fate of people as well as the theme of novels.What’s more,by collecting color metaphors,nine basic color series are concluded,namely black series,white series,red series,grey series,blue series,yellow series,purple series,green series and pink series.The author classifies different metaphorical meanings of colors under the same basic color in this thesis.After identifying and concluding these basic color series,the author finds that Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang vividly portray characters and describe social environment by keeping the same or similar color,changing the color and omitting the color to express the connotation of color according to cultural diversity and literary context.Threrfore,the fate of characters and the theme in the novels are indicated by color metaphors.Finally,three kinds of human body metaphors are concluded based on formation of the cross-domain mapping,namely the mapping from human body to non-human body,the mapping from non-human body to human body and the mapping from human body to human body.In this part,Yang Xianyi and his wife translate all kinds of human body metaphors by three ways:retaining the image,reconstructing the image and omitting the image based on cultural diversity and the lexical development in different cultures.This thesis is hoped to help the readers deepen their understanding of Lu Xun’s novels,present the charm of Chinese and provide more practical translation strategies for young translators.In addition,this thesis is hoped to spread Chinese culture and promote the cultural exchanges between Chinese culture and western culture.