On The Interpretation And English Translation Of Conceptual Metaphor In The Novels From The Perspective Of Figure-ground Theory

Based on the figure-ground theory put forward by Denmark psychologist Rubin in1915,this thesis takes the full-length novel Huozhe by the contemporary Chinese writer Yu Hua and its correspondent English version To Live by Michael Berry as corpus.By collecting examples about conceptual metaphor from Huozhe and classifying those examples on the basis of the conceptual metaphor proposed by Lakoff and Johnson in their coauthored work Metaphors We Live By,this thesis makes a comprehensive analysis on the translation of conceptual metaphor from the perspective of figure-ground theory.The research is carried out with the aim to answer the following two main questions:Firstly,if the figure-ground theory is explanatory to the conceptual metaphor and whether it can be employed to analyze the English translation of such metaphor? Secondly,in the process of translating,what translation strategies are utilized by Berry and what factors lead to the different choices of these strategies?Centered on the above two questions,the discoveries made are as follows:Firstly,figure-ground theory to some degree can be employed to analyze the English translation of conceptual metaphor: To those shared metaphors in Chinese and English cultures namely the totally correspondent figure and ground,it is optimal for those to be translated directly.However,most metaphors are brimmed with cultural connotations,thus when literal and hidden meanings of a metaphor namely its figure and ground differ a lot from each other,the implication should be accordingly lifted to the prominent position or the new figure that is not strange to target audiences should be presented.Besides,it is also found that although there are no so-called free and literal renderings to the orientational metaphor,the conceptualization of such metaphor in English should be accordingly made salient to accommodate to target readers.Secondly,after analyzing the examples quoted from Huozhe and their translations,it has been found that there are three main translation strategies adopted by the translator,which are ranked from high to low in the frequency of utilization: literal translation,free translation and combination of free with literal translation.Thirdly,the choice of translation strategies is also influenced by such factors astranslator subjectivity,translation theory and his sensitivity to culture differences.Berry attaches great significance to spreading Chinese culture and he holds that translator does not own the right to change the original work casually,which accounts for most of literal translations used by him when rendering.But at the same time some of those literal translations may bewilder its target readers due to the absence of Chinese culture-loaded metaphors in target culture.