On Metaphor Translation Based On The Figure-Ground Theory

Most traditional translation theory focused on rhetoric in the study of metaphor translation, and regarded it as language transformation from the rhetoric aspect. Cognitive linguistics gave a brand-new explanation to metaphor——which considered metaphor is not only a language phenomenon, but also an important cognitive style of human, which opened a new perspective for translation study.Lu Xun was honored as "father of China modern novels" for his works full of profound meaning, rich connotation and characteristic language style. Now it is rather hot to study Lu Xun's works, while it is limited on the research of the works'translation. The study aimed at the metaphor translation of Lu Xun's novels, which is the difficulty of translation, is even less. This thesis attempts to research on Lu Xun Xiaoshuo Xuan and its two different English versions from the perspective of Figure-ground theory, to analysize the conveying of metaphor theme, the shift of metaphor figure and the difference between Chinese and English sentence; and then further probe into the selection of metaphor translation strategies, and hope to offer some enlightenment for literary translation.The thesis has five chapters:The first chapter and the second chapter present the aim and significance of the study and current study situation. The third chapter and the fourth chapter are the main parts of the thesis. The third chapter makes a detailed analysis and comparison of metaphors in Lu Xun Xiaoshuo Xuan and its two English versions from three metaphor themes:color metaphor, illness metaphor and body metaphor, and explores the application of figure-ground theory in metaphor translation and its influence of translation strategies' selection to translators. The-fourth chapter refers to the enlightenment of figure-ground translation to metaphor translation from the textual metaphor and sentence conversion perspective. As the diversity of author's, translator's and reader's cognitive thought, the author considers the figure-ground theory would help translators to understand the article's theme and the different expressive ways of the same thing in different languages. Then the translations could highlight the textual metaphor in literary works and effectively avoid the dislocation of figure/ground in translation. Therefore, the sentence analysis of the original and translated text has become the important way of highlighting the metaphor theme. The similarities and differences of the sentence sequence in Lu Xun's originated works and two versions caused the differences of prominent figure/ground and metaphor images, and then affected the coherence and cohesion of the textual metaphor. According to figure-ground theory, the sentence conversion should follow the best mapping. If it can not be mapped directly from the originated domain to target domain, the translator should find another way, such as, adding or transplanting the figure/ground information in translation. Then the translated text can be closer to the original text and easier to be accepted by readers. The fifth chapter makes a summary of the whole thesis, and states the limitation of the research as well as some suggestions for further study.The thesis based on the classic novel Lu Xun Xiaoshuo Xuan and its two versions, which are full of rich metaphors, explores the application of figure-ground theory in textual metaphor and sentence conversion in metaphor translation, and states that translation process accurately is an unconsciously figure/ground salient course which also influenced the metaphor translation strategies and translated text measurement criteria, and brought an enlightening significance to literary translation.