A Study On The Differences Of Cognitive Subjects In Metaphor Translation

Being one of the four masterpieces of China, Hongloumeng has been translated into many foreign languages. Most of these translations are English. One of the features of conceptual metaphor is that it is pervasive in our life, especially in poems and names of this novel, which is also a challenge for translators. When translating metaphors in poems, a translator is an addressee as well as an addresser.Lakoff and Johnson proposed that conceptual metaphors are based on our physical and cultural experience that forms image schema in our minds. The conceptual blending theory, which was proposed by Fauconnier and Turner, is built on conceptual metaphor theory, boldly putting forward mental spaces, aiming at discuss basic conceptual process of human beings.This thesis tries to combine conceptual metaphor theory with conceptual blending theory, and applies them to the analysis of the metaphors in the poems and the translations of the metaphors. As a translator, the first step he or she takes is to deconstruct the metaphors in the thinking mode of the source language, and then to reconstruct the metaphors in the thinking mode of the target language. The last step he or she takes is to translate the original metaphor in target language. As cognitive subject, a translator, in the process of translating, must be affected by his embodied experience, which is deeply processed in their minds and then reflects their personal colors and becomes cognitive subjectivity. Different translators’ cognitive subjectivities would affect the translation of metaphors and be reflected in translation. This thesis chooses three English translations: H. Bencraft Joly’s translation, David Hawkes and John Minford’s translation, as well as Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang’s translation, analyzing and classifying the metaphors in the poems, combining different translators’ body and cultural experience, comparing the differences of these three translations in translating metaphors and discussing the different influences of translator’s subjective differences in metaphor translation. In the end, in diagrams, this thesis combines the differences of translators’ subjectivity with their translation conceptual blending mechanism, and then highlights the importance and specificity of subjective differences.