A Study On The Conceptual Metaphors In Diplomatic Chapters Of Xi Jinping:The Governance Of China And Their Translation

Political and diplomatic texts often use a large number of metaphors to help make concepts concrete,easy to be understood and more accessible to the public.The study of metaphors can enhance understanding of political and diplomatic texts and the study of the translation of metaphors in these texts plays a very important role in facilitating cross-cultural communication.Xi Jinping:The Governance of China(Volume I&Volume II)contain important documents,such as domestic and foreign speeches,talks,and messages of congratulation,etc.by President Xi from November 2012 to September 2017,bearing high research value.However,systematic research on metaphors and their translation in the series of books is still rare.In the 1980s,Lakoff and Johnson put forward and expounded on the notion of conceptual metaphors,extending the research of metaphors from the rhetoric to the cognitive linguistics.This thesis selects 40 articles from the chapters on diplomacy and international relations in Xi Jinping:The Governance of China to analyze the use of metaphors on diplomatic occasions and the corresponding translation strategies of these metaphors.This thesis extracts a total of 12 categories of metaphors employed in the diplomatic chapters of Xi Jinping:The Governance of China.Ranked in descending order of resonance,they are engineering metaphors,journey metaphors,human body metaphors,object metaphors,plant metaphors,machinery metaphors,water flow metaphors,meteorology metaphors,family metaphors,animal metaphors,color metaphors and medical treatment metaphors.First,each of the top seven metaphors isanalyzed to find out the key ideas embodied.Then,the author uses the object metaphors as an example to analyze the translation strategies of metaphors in the official translation.The results show that literal translation is the main translation strategy,accounting for 70%;free translation ranks the second,accounting for 20%;omission is the lowest,accounting for 10%.Furthermore,the author points out literal translation includes total equivalence,rendering into expressions with similar meanings and addition;free translation includes dynamic equivalent rendering,manifestation of the idea,using hyponyms and reversion;and there are two cases of omission:omission when translating the culture-loaded words,and omission when there is either an appositive or structure of coordination.This study can shed light on the theoretical understanding of the conceptual metaphors in diplomatic discourses and their corresponding translation strategies.