English Translation Of Kang As War Metaphor In Report On The Work Of The Government(2003-2022) And Its Ideological Motivations

Metaphor analysis has shifted from traditional rhetorical study to contemporary cognitive research,as people have gradually realized the importance of metaphor in cognition.However,compared with relevant researches abroad,domestic metaphor research still reveals some deficiencies.There is little analysis of metaphor in Chinese political discourse.As is known to all,the politic is complex and far away from people’s daily experience.Therefore,in order to convey the connotations of various abstract and obscure ideas in political discourse to the public,metaphors are undoubtedly the best method for political speakers and lobbyists,and thus researches in this regard are of utmost importance.As an official political discourse,the Report on the Work of the Government includes many types of metaphors,among which journey metaphor,architecture metaphor and war metaphor appear more frequently.This thesis selects war metaphors with high frequency and great variation as research objects.Based on Critical Metaphor Analysis and the Skopos Theory,this thesis studies the representation and translation of war metaphors in the Report on the Work of the Government so as to explore the hidden ideological motivations.The concept of war metaphor is to use the war domain to understand the target domain and map the concepts in the war to another domain.Charteris-Black(2004)first proposed Critical Metaphor Analysis,aiming to show that the construction of metaphorical meaning is determined by the ideology and power relations behind it.Therefore,Critical Metaphor Analysis can be used to study the attitudes,positions or viewpoints in the use of war metaphors with Kang as the keyword,which consists of contextual analysis,metaphor identification,metaphor interpretation and metaphor explanation.Among them,metaphor explanation indicates that metaphorical use is an activity with a definite purpose,and seven metaphorical purposes are proposed.In the 1970 s,Hans Vermeer proposed that translation is a purposeful act,and different translation methods should be adopted according to different translation purposes.In this regard,skopos rule,coherence rule and fidelity rule have been mooted.Therefore,the Skopos Theory can be used to study the purpose behind translation methods of Kang.Metaphor explanation and skopos rule both indicate that the use of metaphor and its translation are purposeful activities,which is the key to the connection between these two theories.This thesis mainly discusses the following three questions:(1)What are the representations of war metaphors with Kang as the keyword in the Report on the Work of the Government(2003-2022)?(2)What are the translation methods of war metaphors with Kang as the keyword?(3)What are the underlying ideological motivations for the changes in war metaphor use and its translation methods?This thesis combines quantitative methods with qualitative methods.According to Charteris-Black’s Critical Metaphor Analysis,metaphor recognition includes the selection of metaphorical keywords.There are many keywords in war metaphor,including Kang,Da and others.Among them,the word Kang appears more frequently,and its application fields are scattered with varied translation methods.Therefore,this thesis takes Kang as the keyword and its translation methods as the research object so as to analyze the ideology of Chinese government and its ruling Party.As for research procedures,in order to study the changes and development of China’s ruling ideology at a deeper level,this thesis selects the Report on the Work of the Government(2003-2022),which has undergone two leadership changes.Two corpora are built,namely English-Chinese parallel corpus of the Report on the Work of the Government(2003-2022)and corpus of war metaphors with Kang as the keyword used in the Report on the Work of the Government(2003-2022).MIPVU is needed for the identification of whether a word is metaphorical or not.The conclusions of this thesis are as follows:(1)Through corpus analysis and text analysis,it is found that war metaphors with Kang as the keyword are mainly distributed in three fields from 2003 to 2022: “the battle against the epidemic”,“the battle against financial crisis” and “the battle against natural disaster”.Meanwhile,from 2003 to 2013,war metaphors with Kang as the keyword covered a wide range of fields.From 2014 to 2022,the scope of war metaphors with Kang as the keyword narrowed down,mainly concentrated in the layer of “the battle against the epidemic”;(2)It is found that there are four translation methods of war metaphors with Kang as the keyword,namely,reproducing the image in the target language,converting the metaphor into ground,replacing the image in the ST with a standard TT image and omission;(3)In terms of the ideology behind metaphor use,it can be found that from 2003 to2013,the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China with Comrade Hu Jintao at its core put forward the scientific outlook on development and showed a sense of urgency for economic development.From 2014 to 2022,the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has emphasized the Chinese Dream and has taken a more mature attitude towards economic and ecological development.As for the ideology behind translation methods 1)The change of translation methods of “the battle against the epidemic”(from reproducing the same image in the TT to transforming images and reproducing the same images)shows that the public’s understanding of the epidemic has deepened;two leading groups both adopted reproducing images to demonstrate their cultural confidence and determination to build a community with a shared future for mankind.2)The transformation of translation methods of “the battle against natural disasters”(from reproducing the same image in the TT to image conversion and omission)indicates that the new CPC Central Committee is committed to building a more peaceful,friendly and beautiful image of China.