English Translation Of Jingui Yaolue From The Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Nowadays,people are becoming more and more interested in Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM)across the world.Both people in China and in other countries are willing to see TCM doctors when they are ill.Therefore,in this context,translation of works of TCM is important for its spread both in cultural or medical fields.Jingui Yaolue,as a clinical TCM classic,has a significant place in TCM clinical practice.It is a masterpiece written by Zhang Zhongjing in Han Dynasty.In this book,it introduces the causes and symptoms of various diseases,formulas of drugs for their treatment,as well as food contraindications and their treatment in clinical TCM.A literature review of Jingui Yaolue indicates that there have been studies of this classic from various theoretical perspectives,including back-transformation theory,contrastive linguistics,frame semantics,systemic functional linguistics,cultural linguistics,eco-translatology,and so on.However,there has been no research on the English translation of Jingui Yaolue from the perspective of conceptual metaphor theory.Therefore,it is significant to study the English translation of Jingui Yaolue from a new perspective,exploring the issue of translation of this TCM classic in the light of conceptual metaphor theory.In this thesis,we discuss the English translation of Jingui Yaolue from the perspective of conceptual metaphor theory.We make a comparison among three English versions of this TCM classic.The three versions are Synopsis of Prescriptions of the Golden Chamber(2007)translated by Luo Xiwen,Essential Prescriptions of the Golden Cabinet(2013)by Nigel Wiseman,and Essentials of the Golden Cabinet(2017)by Li Zhaoguo.From the perspective of conceptual metaphor theory,we find that free translation or paraphrase methods can help readers understand the metaphorical meaning of the original text.By contrast,the literal translation method can convey the characteristics of TCM culture more effectively.Meanwhile,annotation or ellipsis strategies can alsobe adopted in some cases.For structural metaphor,the characteristics of the source domain can be used to describe the metaphorical meaning of the target domain during translation.For orientational metaphor,literal meaning might be confusing and free translation is a better choice.For ontological metaphor,it can be divided into entity and substance metaphors,container metaphor and personification.The characteristics of the entities and substances involved should be explained in the translated version in regard to entity and substance metaphors.The corresponding prepositions or words related to houses or places can be used during translation with regard to container metaphor.Moreover,human characteristics should be conveyed in the course of translation for personification.In addition,the book Jingui Yaolue focuses on four main areas.They cover TCM principles,TCM methods,TCM formulas and Chinese herbs.As for different areas,different translation strategies might be adopted.For the former two areas,free translation or paraphrase methods are better.In regard to the latter two areas,literal translation with the annotation method will be better.With the study of conceptual metaphor and English translation of Jingui Yaolue,this thesis will be useful for translation of TCM works.And it will be of some value for the spread of TCM culture overseas.