Research Of Image Metaphor In The Book Of Songs And Its Translation Strategies

The Book of Songs is the source of Chinese literature.Since ancient times,many scholars have studied its rich cultural connotation.In recent years,in order to better spread Chinese culture,translators and translation researchers devoted themselves to the translation of traditional literature.Nowadays,most of the scholars who study the translation of The Book of Songs explore and analyze their phonetic,semantic and syntactical levels respectively from the perspective of literature and culture.They think that the translation of The Book of Songs should be more subtle.However,there is little research so far related to the image translation of The Book of Songs,even less from the cognitive perspective.That is the very reason why this thesis comes into being.In this thesis,the author will carry on a detailed analysis of the image metaphors in The Book of Songs with the cognitive theory of conceptual metaphor and explore image metaphor translation with relevant translation theories including Mandelblit's Cognitive Translation Hypothesis and Functional Equivalence Theory by Eugene A.Nida,bringing forward some methods and strategies for its translation.This thesis includes five parts: Part one is an introduction of this thesis,including research background,research significance,research purposes and research methods,as well as the organizational structure of this thesis.Part two is the literature review,which mainly introduces the English translation of The Book of Songs,the review of metaphor and its basic types.Part three is the theoretical framework of this thesis,namely cognitive linguistics,conceptual metaphor theory,Mandelblit's Cognitive Translation Hypothesis and Nida's Functional Equivalence Translation Theory.Part four is the core of this thesis.It uses the conceptual metaphor theory and the definition of image metaphor in Part three to classify and analyze the image metaphor in The Book of Songs.On the basis of fully understanding the deep meaning of image metaphor,the author makes an analysis of metaphor translation and puts forward four translation strategies in this thesis combining the Mandelblit's Cognitive Translation Hypothesis and Nida's Functional Equivalence Translation Theory.The fifth part summarizes the main findings,limitations and suggestions for future research.As there are many interpretations of The Book of Songs,this may lead to some cognitive differences in the classification of imagery metaphors in The Book of Songs.The classification of this study may not be representative and authoritative.Therefore,it is hoped that more authoritative interpretations of The Book of Songs will be used for detailed classification of image metaphors and translation studies in the future.At the same time,it is hoped that this study will serve as a valuable reference for further research on The Book of Songs by more peer scholars.