A Study On Translation Strategies Of Animal Metaphors In Shakespearean Plays From The Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Shakespeare,regarded as a literary giant around the world,has served as a benchmark for British literature at its pinnacle.Since 1903,when an unknown translator published a translation of Tales From Shakespere at Shanghai Dawen Press,Shakespeare has steadily gained popularity among Chinese readers,translators and academics.The many Chinese translations of Shakespeare are featured with various styles.Under this background,the studies on the Chinese translation of Shakespeare arose,focusing on issues like the literary forms of translation,translation quality,translation strategy,translator perspectives and others.Shakespeare’s plays are a treasure trove of vocabulary,animal vocabulary in particular,along with other folklore vocabulary which constructed the vivid ecological picture of British society in Shakespeare’s time.The abundant animal metaphors reflect how Shakespeare’s contemporaries constructed their knowledge of the world through interaction with animals.Previous studies have shown that the existing studies on metaphor translation of Shakespeare’s works have neither taken into consideration the results of overseas studies on the animal vocabulary of Shakespeare’s works,nor made exhaustive studies,and that most of the analyses are limited to the linguistic level.The present study has selected The Merry Wives of Windsor and its five translations as research objects.In the light of Conceptual Metaphor Theory,all expressions in the original text containing animal images are extracted through close reading.To summarize the translation of animal metaphors contained therein,the cognitive model of metaphor translation is employed to analyze the reproduction of animal metaphors in the target text,as well as the similarities and differences of the five translations in terms of metaphor translation.It is found that the commonality of the translators regarding the translation of animal metaphors in Shakespeare is to a large extent the shared embodied experience in the cognitive context of Chinese language,while the difference or creativity on the part of the translators is mostly based on the personal embodied experience influenced by various factors.Due to different cognitive contexts between Chinese and English,translators sometimes neglected or even misinterpret animal metaphors in the original text.And in translations that successfully reproduce the metaphors of the original text their forms are varied.Based on these findings,suggestions for future Shakespeare translators are provided.