| Xi Jinping: The Governance of China Ⅱ includes 99 speeches,articles and instructions by President Xi at home and abroad from 2014 to 2017.Numerous metaphors used in the book make abstract political expressions vivid and easy to accept,being an obvious linguistic feature.At the same time,these metaphors,mostly derived from Chinese cultural background and national distinction,pose great challenges to translation and communication across the world,thus leaving large space for and worthy of study.Based on metaphor definition and identification,5,131 metaphors in The Governance Ⅱ are collected for analysis.The metaphors collected are classified according to Lakoff(1980),with their frequency and types compared to those in Obama’s 99 speeches delivered in the same period.Methods and effectiveness of the English translation of 3,919 ontological metaphors,the most frequently used ones,are further examined.The perspective taken is historical and cultural intertextual meanings of these metaphors.In other words,analysis,statistics and case studies are conducted to look at the English translation of intertextual meanings of the ontological metaphors,which fall into three types,i.e.,entity and substance metaphors,container metaphors and personification.Emphasis is put on how the intertextual implications of metaphorical images are represented in English.It is indicated that,in general,the intertextual meanings conveyed in such metaphorical intertextual forms as references,allusions,idioms,and those with compound intertextuality are translated in three ways according to different contexts,i.e.,image preserved,image transformed and image abandoned.The examined samples are mostly acceptable in the English context.However,the translation of some metaphors that contain intertextual meanings may fail to convey the original message because it ignores the target readers’ ignorance of the intertextual knowledge and thus fails to trigger a proper understanding of such meanings.It is hoped that this study can serve as an operational guide to the translation of expressions with Chinese characteristics in political texts,thus helping promote political and cultural communication between China and the Western. |
