On Chinese-English Translation Of Conceptual Metaphors In Political Discourse

In 1980,Lakoff and Johnson proposed the innovative "Conceptual Metaphor Theory" in the book Metapho,rs We Live By.They pointed out that the metaphor is not just a means of expressing ideas through language,but a way by which mankind can widely recognize and interact himself with the outside world.The metaphor is not only a linguistic rhetoric,but also a kind of thinking mode.It is not only a mapping projected from the source domain to the target domain,but also an effective cognitive tool to recognize the abstract things through the concrete things.Metaphors are closely related to politics.In his essay Politics without Metaphor Is Like a Fish without Water,Thompson(1996)pointed out that metaphors can help politicians reorganize the reality by creating a metaphorical world.Political discourse,as an important tool for expressing political views,is generally abstract and complicated.However,the use of metaphors can make the political language more vivid,appealing and persuasive.Based on the "Conceptual Metaphor Theory" and taking the 79 articles from both the Chinese and English version of Xi Jinping:The Governance of China as the research object,this thesis adopts case study,qualitative and quantitative methods to select,summarize and analyze the frequently used conceptual metaphors.Xi Jinping:The Governance of China shows the governing ideas and strategies of the new central leadership of the Communist Party of China.The widespread use of conceptual metaphors is one of the linguistic features of this book.Meanwhile,the study of the conceptual metaphors in this book can not only promote the development of Chinese language art,but also help more people better understand the Chinese government's policy and value orientation.On the basis of the classification of conceptual metaphors(Lakoff and Johnson,1980),this thesis makes the analysis on the frequently used conceptual metaphors in Xi Jinping:The Governance of China from three main categories:structural metaphors,ontological metaphors and orientational metaphors.Besides,according to Mandelblit's "Cognitive Translation Hypothesis"(1995)and Newmark's“Seven procedures in metaphor translation"(2001),this thesis analyzes and summarizes the Chinese-English translation methods from three types of conceptual metaphors under the similar and the different mapping conditions.The study finds that different translation methods can be adopted under the different mapping mechanisms:literal translation is generally adopted under the similar mapping conditions,while free translation is mostly adopted under the different mapping conditions;meanwhile,some translation techniques can be used to make readers better understand the conceptual metaphors in political discourse.In short,the author combines "Conceptual Metaphor Theory",the translation methods with the conceptual metaphors in Xi Jinping:The Governance of China to study metaphorical mechanisms and the Chinese-English translation methods,with the aim to provide a reference for the majority of English translation fans.However,this thesis only explores the Chinese-English translation of conceptual metaphors in political discourse,the breadth and depth of this thesis are far from enough.The author also hopes that a more in-depth study will be conducted in the future.