A Study Of Translation On Metaphor In Tang Poetry From The Perspective Of ECL

Tang poetry is a peak of ancient Chinese literature,a shining pearl of Chinese culture,and an excellent carrier for spreading Chinese culture in its communication with other countries.However,there are many metaphors in Tang poetry,which is a big problem that cannot be avoided in the English translation of Tang poetry.There have been many research results on the translation of metaphors in classical Chinese poems,involving Cognitive Linguistics,Cognitive Psychology,Pragmatics,Systemic Functional Linguistics,mental philosophy,translatology,culture,aesthetics,poetics,etc.However,the above research inevitably has some limitations.First of all,researchers rely on their experience and intuition to a great extent on how to identify metaphors in classical Chinese poems.Secondly,the studies mostly are case analyses(qualitative research method)and lack the support of relevant data statistics(quantitative research method).Finally,the theories used by the researchers are mostly traditional ones,and the scholars who pay attention to the Embodied-Cognitive Linguistics derived from Cognitive Linguistics in recent years are still limited.Therefore,this thesis puts forward a four-step procedure of metaphor recognition and analyzes the translation of metaphor in Tang poetry from the perspective of EmbodiedCognitive Linguistics based on the corpus of the Version of Classical Chinese Poetry: Tang Poetry(I & II)Translated by Xu Yuanchong.This research involves a total of 97 Tang poems and 173 metaphors.The research attempts to answer the following two questions:(1)When translating metaphors in Tang Poetry,what translation methods does the translator adopt? And what are the proportions of them?(2)Is the translator’s choice of different translation methods related to the experience and cognition of the source and target language readers? If there is relevance,then how are they related?The findings of the research are as follows:(1)Metaphor translation involves linguistic level,cognitive level,and realistic level.The translation method at the linguistic level includes complete and partial literal translation;the translation method at the cognitive level involves replacing the original vehicle that is unfamiliar to the target language reader,translating the tenor of metaphor(replacing the vehicle by translating the tenor;supplementing the tenor when translating the vehicle),and translating the ground of metaphor(replacing the vehicle by translating the ground;supplementing the ground when translating the vehicle),etc.;the translation method at the realistic level includes adding information other than the tenor,vehicle and ground,and interpreting metaphors based on the current context or historical facts.(2)The translation at the cognitive level is the most(52.0%),followed by the linguistic level(38.2%),and the least is the realistic level(6.4%).(3)The three translation levels(i.e.,linguistic level,cognitive level,and realistic level)are just the demonstration of the universality of experience and cognition of human beings,the uniqueness of culture and thinking modes,and target language readers’ lack of experience and cognition on Chinese culture.The three translation levels reflect the characteristics of different translation methods adopted by the translator in dealing with different metaphors,i.e.,taking into account the universality of experience and cognition,the uniqueness of Chinese culture,and the lack of the target language readers’ experience and cognition on the source language.It is hoped that this study can provide some references for the translation of metaphors in poems,and thus help classical Chinese cultural classics and excellent traditional Chinese culture can better go out.However,there are also some deficiencies in this study.For example,the scope of the study is not wide enough,only involving the translation of metaphor in Tang Poetry,without studying the translation of metonymy in it,and failing to conduct a comparative analysis of different translators’ translations.In the future,we will try to expand the research scope to the translation of metaphor and metonymy in all Tang poetry and even other classical Chinese poetry,and make a comparative study of the different versions of translation by many expert translators,hoping to get more convincing conclusions,inspiration,and enlightenment.