The Cognitive Study On Metaphor Translation In Selected Works Of Mao Tse-tung

As the presentation window of national image and political stand and ideology,political discourse plays an important role in international political communication.However,the concepts in political discourse are abstract and profound so that numerous metaphorical metaphors are applied into political discourse to explain them and make it vivid and easy to understand.However,the polysemous phenomenon of metaphorical vocabularies will produce in the process of cross-domain mapping through a metaphorical way thus the most special problem is the metaphor translation during the translation process and it is vital for translator to deal with the metaphor translation correctly in order to improve translation quality of translated text and furthermore more attention should be attached to the metaphor translation.Metaphor was considered as an important figure of speech in literature for a long time and the study on metaphor was rhetorical-oriented under the static comparison level.The study on metaphor did not shift its focus from rhetoric level to cognitive level with the development of cognitive science and cognitive linguistics until the 1970s.The traditional view on metaphor has been challenged by Metaphors We Live By written by the famous American cognitive linguists Lakoff and Johnson in 1980,who conducted the thorough research on the metaphor in everyday language and put forward that metaphor is not only a kind of figures of speech but also an important cognitive way which prevails throughout human life.The research on metaphor from cognitive perspective provided a brand-new angle of view for the research on metaphor as well as metaphor translation.Meanwhile,metaphor translation is not only the interlingual transformation of linguistic symbol but also the complex psychological and cognitive process.It refers to the transformation of language and culture so that the translator should firstly understand the implications of metaphor and then synthetically deal with the metaphor translation through cognitive thinking.As the carrier of Mao Tse-tung thought,Selected Works had a far-reaching impact both on China and the world.Its English version was widespread and promoted the understanding of Mao Tse-tung thought,Chinese culture,history and social system for the people in European,American and African area.Besides,due to the author's special identity,SelectedWorks attracted extensive attention from the reader and translator at home and abroad.The political idea and philosophical thought in Selected Works were deeply rooted among the people and the concise language and the flexible figures of speech were the typical features in Selected Works.The author used a great deal of metaphorical expression to explain the and profound ideological connotation of politics,economics and culture in order to make it vivid and understandable and tap into outpouring vitality for the classic masterpiece.Therefore,Selected Works provides both the treasure for statesmen to study Chinese political knowledge and the precious corpus for linguists to research language.The scholars at home and abroad mainly studied the English translation of Selected Works from the perspective of history and culture.As the typical example of political discourse,Selected Works contains large number of metaphors but few scholars studied metaphor translation in Selected Works from cognitive perspective.Along with the further development of cognition and metaphor translation,it is of great significance for analyzing the author's cognitive process or exploring the translator's cognitive mechanism in the process of metaphor translation and the metaphor translation of Selected Works to study the metaphor translation in Selected Works from the perspective of cognition.As an important theory of cognitive linguistic,Conceputal Integration Theory studies meaning construction from the cognitive perspective and provides cognitive motivation for some special language phenomena.The theory has the great explanatory power for meaning construction because it follows the general principle of human cognition and makes up for the weakness of metaphorical cognitive mechanism.By applying this theory,the cognitive mechanism involved in the process of the metaphor translation in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung(hereinafter referred to as Selected Works)can be explained and a new angle is provided for studying the metaphor translation in Selected Works from the cognitive perspective.Therefore,based on conceptual integration theory,this thesis will make a thorough analysis on the cognitive mode of the metaphor translation in Selected Works from the cognitive perspective so as to explore the cognitive process of the metaphor translation in Selected Works,which aims at enlarging the research perspectives on metaphor translation and providing references for metaphor translation in political discourse.According to formula for metaphor translation,this thesis divides the cognitive process of the metaphor translation in Selected Works into a process of blending among spaces.The input spaces of source language and target language with its shared schema and abstract information will be mapped into the generic space and then the two input spaces form into the emergent structure under the mapping of the generic space and finally a blend text of translation is presented.Then this thesis comprehensively analyzes the metaphor translation in Selected Works and summarized the different strategies applied in the metaphor translation in Selected Works under four basic types of networks in the process of blending:Frame Networks;One-sided Networks;Two-sided Networks;Single Framing Networks.In the metaphor translation under a frame network,the translator will adopt literal translation strategy that is reproducing the same image in the target culture because the same conceptual metaphor is shared by the two inputs.In the metaphor translation under a one-sided network and two-sided network,the translator will translate the metaphors in source text into the different metaphors in target text by replacing the image in the source language with a standard image in the target culture when they have the different conceptual metaphors or when the conceptual metaphor from source culture is absent in the target culture.In the metaphor translation.under a single-framing network,the translator will convert the conceptual metaphor to sense that is translating the conceptual metaphor in source culture into non-metaphors in target culture.In this thesis,the combination of Conceptual Integration Theory and the metaphor translation in Selected Works provides not only a brand new perspective for metaphor translation research,but also the reference for metaphor translation in political discourse.