| Cognitive linguists believe that metaphor is not only a rhetorical device,but a cognitive way for human beings to understand the world.In non-literary texts,such as financial ones,metaphors not only make the text characterized by rhetoric but also assist people to understand the information in a vivid way so as to achieve the purpose of effective communication.Crashed: How A Decade of Financial Crisis Changed the World,by the British historian Adam Tooze,Director of European Institute,belongs to financial text in which many metaphors are employed to illustrate financial concepts so as to help people to understand the financial knowledge involved in a vivid language.This author notices that the translation of these metaphors will affect readers’ comprehension of information and their reading fluency.Therefore,she chooses the translation of metaphors as the topic of this report.Lakoff and Johnson are the first to study metaphor from the perspective of cognitive linguistics,and put forward the conceptual metaphor theory.With their theory as the guiding principle,this report will explore the translation of conceptual metaphors in financial texts.Lakoff divides the conceptual metaphors into three categories,namely structural metaphor,orientational metaphor and ontological metaphor.Conceptual metaphors in the source text are also divided into these three categories.This author explores the translation of them,hoping to strengthen the understanding of conceptual metaphors in financial texts and methods for translating them.The author concludes that there are three translation methods for translating conceptual metaphors: retaining the vehicle,changing the vehicle and paraphrasing.Vehicle is a part of the metaphor,and its attributes are borrowed to describe the tenor(things being described).When the cognitive structure in terms of the same vehicle is the same between the source language and the target language,vehicle can be retained in translation.When the cognitive structure is different,the vehicle should be changed to an equivalent vehicle in the target language which contains the same metaphorical meaning if an equivalent vehicle can be found in the source text.If neither the cognition towards the vehicle is the same nor an equivalent vehicle can be found,the method of paraphrasing should be adopted to explain the meaning of the metaphor. |
