A Study On The English Translation Of Ge Fei’s Peach Blossom Paradise From The Perspective Of Embodied Cognitive Translatology

Peach Blossom Paradise is a representative novel by the famous contemporary writer Ge Fei that has won the 2015 Mao Dun Prize for Fiction.Translated by Canaan Morse,a sinologist,the English version of Peach Blossom Paradise was shortlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Fiction.The book includes many images and cultural models rooted in classical Chinese aesthetics and literature.It is challenging for translators to appreciate its imagery and decipher the context with numerous allusions.This thesis takes the English translation of Peach Blossom Paradise as the object of analysis,selects a number of appropriate examples,introduces the theoretical framework of Embodied-Cognitive Translatology,and uses conceptual metaphors and cognitive models as two embodied cognition approaches to analyze how the translator translated the large images,idiomatic expressions and allusions in the novel and the translation effects.The thesis found that in translating conceptual metaphors,the translator directly translated some of the conceptual metaphors based on the perceptual and cognitive characteristics shared by Chinese and English readers and made necessary explanations according to the cultural and linguistic background of the target language.For conceptual metaphors with cultural elements,the translator translated them by substituting the source domain for creating conceptual metaphors with similar metaphorical mapping meaning or removing the source domain and directly translating the target domain.The translator also eliminated conceptual metaphors referring to the context.When translating cultural models,the representative translation strategies the translator employs are specificity and category shift.In translating idiomatic expressions containing idealized cognitive models,based on the cultural background of English readers and the novel’s context,he used the strategy of specificity to help readers construct propositional or image-schematic structures and quickly grasp the metaphorical mapping meanings.The translator engaged in category replacement and category level shift when translating cultural models containing allusions.He selected categories that are more familiar and easier to understand for English readers,reducing the difficulty of comprehending the text.The findings imply that the research perspective of Embodied-Cognitive Translatology emphasizes the nature of embodiment and cognition underlying language transformation and attaches importance to the differences in cognition of various subjects(authors,translators,and readers),which offers a fresh viewpoint for literary translation studies.Under the lens of embodied recognition,the English translation of Peach Blossom Paradise adapts to the cognitive habits of the target language readers,lowers the comprehension barriers caused by cultural and cognitive differences,and ensures high text readability while inadvertently causing partial loss of cultural content.It deserves to be a critical reference for contemporary novel translation studies and contemporary novel translation.