A Study Of Metaphor Translation In Lovell’s The Complete Fiction Of Lu Xun Under Adaptation Theory

Lu Xun is the pioneer of Chinese vernacular stories.His 33 short stories with rich metaphorical expressions have profound meanings and epitomize Chinese society in the early 20th century.Up to now,there are at least 40 English translations of these short stories.Among them,The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun translated by Lovell is the only translation that includes all these 33 short stories,which is classic and comprehensive.This study is intended to study metaphor translation in The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun by Lovell under Adaptation Theory,to discuss how Lovell has dynamically adapted to the linguistic context and communicative context,and to give a systematic analysis of the translation procedures of metaphor,translation techniques and reasons for using them.Through the study,the major findings are as the followings:(1)During the process of metaphor translation,Lovell dynamically adapts to at least four levels of linguistic context(lexical level,semantic level,syntactic level,textual level)and three levels of communicative context(mental world,social world,physical world).(2)Lovell mainly adopts five translation procedures of metaphor,including reproducing the same image,replacing the image in the source language(SL)with a standard target language(TL)image,converting the metaphor to sense,translating the simile by the metaphor,and deleting the metaphor,and five translation techniques,including shift,combination,substitution,addition,and omission.Reproducing the same image is mostly made by shift and combination,replacing the image in the SL with a standard TL image by substitution,converting the metaphor to sense by addition,while translating the simile by the metaphor and deleting the metaphor by omission and addition.(3)When adapting at the lexical,semantic,and textual levels,reproducing the same image is usually adopted by Lovell;when adapting at the syntactic level,translating the simile by the metaphor is often used;when adapting to the differences in the mental state,social world and physical world of the SL and TL,converting the metaphor to sense,replacing the image in the SL with a standard TL image and deleting the metaphor are preferred.The purpose of this study is to further explore the metaphor translation and enrich the study on the metaphor translation of Lu Xun’s short stories from the perspective of Adaptation Theory.At the same time,this study is also expected to contribute to the dissemination of Lu Xun’s works and Chinese culture in the world.