Metaphor Translation: A Cultural Perspective

Metaphor is common in our daily life. It composes most of the vocabulary men use. Whether conscious or not, men are using metaphor when they are talking or writing. As a figure of speech, metaphor is unavoidably associated with culture due to the relationship of language and culture. People with different means of thinking have different cultures. The metaphorical language used by people must be fully saturated with culture peculiar to it. As far as the theme of the thesis is concerned, it is indispensable to make clear the relationship between metaphor and culture. Since language is a very important component and also the carrier of culture, the process of translation involves not only the transfer of language, but also the transfer of culture, especially that reflected by metaphor. To a certain degree, translating is a complex and fascinating task for it has been defined as a cross-cultural communication event, which makes it essential to conduct studies on metaphor translation from the cultural perspective. This thesis tries to analyze the metaphor translation from a cultural perspective and discusses the principles and techniques in metaphor translation.This thesis consists of four chapters in addition to an introduction and a conclusion. The introduction briefly overviews the relationship of metaphor and culture in language, then draws the conclusion that attention should be paid in metaphor translation, which is a great part of cross-cultural communication. Chapter One mainly discusses the definition of "metaphor" and its expressions in Chinese and English, and also analyzes the differences of metaphors used in words and phrases in both languages. Chapter Two tries to find out cultural implication of metaphor. Through the analysis of different way of metaphor expression, Chinese and English both use metaphor in language pervasively. While the method of metaphors' expressions reflects different cultural preferences. Chapter Three concludes the cross-cultural communication of metaphor translation in essence at beginning of this part, then starts to analyze the barriers of metaphor translation because it is also a transfer of culture. And then it sums up the principles of metaphor translation and its process. Chapter Four discusses the detailed techniques of metaphor translation. Equivalence in function should be the purpose of cultural communication, thus several methods should be adopted in metaphor translation. Translators can take many forms and strategies to translate metaphor, and in translating he must consider the relationships between metaphor, culture, and translation.In the conclusion, it reemphasizes that interlingual translation serves not only for language itself, but also the different cultures and different readers. The translator, therefore, should make an adequate research on cultural background and choose useful strategy to realize the functional equivalence for different cultures.To sum up, this thesis puts forward the great difficulties of metaphor translation, owing to the cultural implication of metaphors. Although it is said to be untranslatable, the thesis analyses the cross-culture communication and functional equivalence. It is also possible, therefore, to translate metaphor through cross-cultural perspective and there are several principle and techniques in metaphor translation.