On Conceptual Metaphor Translation Strategies Of The Nicknames In Shui Hu Zhuan

Nickname,which is given by others based on one's appearance,personality,personal experience or skills,is a special way of addressing.As a way of highlighting the characters' images vividly,nickname serves as a cultural symbol as well as a linguistic phenomenon so that it is of high possibility for the readers to get a better understanding of these people.Shui Hu Zhuan,one of the most invaluable Chinese classical literary works,enjoys a remarkable reputation both at home and abroad for its exciting plot and abundant nicknames as well.In other words,the nickname in this novel is one of its main features and plays an important role in constructing the images of the characters.Nevertheless,owing to the fact that nickname is not the mainstream in the academic circle,little attention has been paid to the studies on nickname.In light of this,the author determines to perform a research on the nicknames which are representative in the famous novel Shui Hu Zhuan.In ancient times,scholars such as Aristotle just considered metaphor as a figure of speech from the perspective of rhetorics.Since then,most studies have been carried out at the rhetoric or semantic level,let alone those researches on metaphor translation.However,great improvement has been made in the cognitive linguistic field since the emergence of the cognitive turn marked by Conceptual Metaphor Theory proposed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in 1980.In their co-authored book Metaphors We Live By,Lakoff and Johnson argued that metaphor should not be viewed as mere words.Instead,metaphor is a way of understanding and experiencing the world by building one's own conceptual system.Due to their efforts in discovering the essence of metaphor,the limitations of metaphor studies were broken through and a new perspective was accordingly provided for metaphor researches.But regretfully,the studies on metaphor translation still remains stagnant.According to Conceptual Metaphor Theory,since translation is also a cognitive activity in which the target language readers get to understand the writer's cognition pattern in the target language,more progress should be achieved in the field of metaphor translation.With the guidance of Conceptual Metaphor Theory,the author of this thesis selects Shui Hu Zhuan as well as its two English versions translated by Sidney Shapiro and Pearl S.Buck respectively as the materials and finds out the working mechanism of these nicknames.Focusing on some concrete examples in the twotranslated versions,the author also analyzes and concludes corresponding strategies and methods,of which the target is to enrich both the theoretical knowledge and practical skills of translating.That is to say,this thesis offers some references for many similar translation practices in the future on the one hand,and provides the language data and a new perspective for the studies on Shui Hu Zhuan on the other hand.There are five chapters in this thesis.Chapter one is an introduction which is mainly about the research background,research purpose and significance and the research method of this study.Also,the reasons for choosing these two English versions will be explained,and the structure of this thesis will be presented as well.In Chapter two,the author will give a literature review of the relevant studies on metaphor,metaphor translation as well as those on Shui Hu Zhuan.Chapter three mainly focuses on the theoretical framework of this study.As the most significant part of this thesis,Chapter four can be roughly divided into three sections.Firstly,based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory,the 132 nicknames in Shui Hu Zhuan are categorized into nine groups according to their source domains.Then,the author concludes the two translation strategies adopted by the two translators respectively.Lastly,the author summarizes the four methods of nickname translation applied by Sidney Shapiro and Pearl S.Buck in common in Similar Mapping Condition and Different Mapping Condition.Chapter five is the conclusion part,in which both the major discoveries and the limitations of this study are mentioned.