On The Translation Of Ancient Chinese Essays In Chinese Literature (1951-1966) From The Perspective Of Interpersonal Metaphor

Previous studies on ancient Chinese essays mostly took the original text as research object,but not the translated version.Most existing studies of the translation of ancient Chinese essays focus on the conveyance of the aesthetic meaning,the images,artistic conception etc.Researches from the perspective of linguistics remain blank.From the perspective of interpersonal metaphor and with the combination of corpus method and quantitative analysis,the author attempts to answer the questions:(1)what are the features of alteration of both metaphor of mood and metaphor of modality in the translated texts in Chinese Literature(1951-1966)and(2)why did the translator made such alterations.There are three major findings of the research:(1)the main trend of metaphor alteration is to reduce the difficulty brought by metaphorical form of modality and mood,which means that retaining congruent form or altering metaphorical form to congruent form take the dominant position;(2)most of the alteration appears in direct speech which has the function of constructing and sculpturing characters' image;(3)nearly half of the modality alteration belong to objective implicit or explicit,which could alienate the modal responsibility from the translator.And four main reasons are concluded:(1)readability improvement.The main driving force of establishing Chinese Literature is the urgent need of introducing Chinese culture to the foreign world,therefore,the translator must pay more attention to the target reader's reading expectation during the translating process.For this reason,the translator altered most of the sentences of metaphorical form into congruent form,or just omitted the metaphor in the translated texts,in order to make an equivalence between semantic level and grammatical level;(2)image construction of the characters.Since direct speech involves the speakers of both sides directly,and it is a typical way of building and sculpturing the image or the feature of the character,therefore,the employment of direct speech itself is a way of sculpturing image,let alone the modality-alteration and mood-alteration of direct speech.The alteration of both modality and mood indicates a more purposeful alteration intention of the translator—to guide the target reader by the way paved by the translator;(3)shift of modal responsibility.Since modality is a hidden indication of the translator or the author's intention,the choice of using modality expression also represents their attitudes in spite of the innate differences of the two languages.The most fundamental purpose of Chinese Literature is to promote and broadcast the preeminent Chinese literary image.Since it is a magazine to publicize China to abroad,the policy may differ from the domestic.Therefore,the selection of literary works need to avoid sensitive issues,as well as keeping neutral with vague ideology,therefore,tending to use more objective modality is reasonable for it can alienate or shift the translator's modal responsibility;(4)innate differences between Chinese and English.Owing to the different grammar and expression between two languages,there is inevitably unequivalence in other aspects during the process of pursuing equivalence,and mood and modality are included.This thesis is the first study on the translation of ancient Chinese essays from the perspective of interpersonal metaphor which also firstly involves “person” in the research of ancient Chinese essays.By doing this research,the author hopes to break the traditional views on the studies of translated ancient Chinese essays,also to provide some references to both the research of the translation of ancient Chinese essays and the research of interpersonal metaphor.