A Cognitive Approach To The Translation Of Conceptual Metaphors In English Economic News

In light of the contemporary metaphor theory, metaphor is not onlya rhetorical device, but also a way of thinking and cognition, which isdeeply rooted in people’s thinking and action. In1983, McCloskey claimsthat economics is heavily metaphorical and recognizes the importance ofmetaphor in economics. Metaphor and its translation in economic fieldhave drawn many scholars’ attention, but few of them conduct studiesconcerning conceptual metaphors in economic news from a cognitiveperspective.The thesis, based on Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphortheory, having collected and analyzed quantitative examples selectedfrom the latest economic news, finds that the main conceptual metaphorswidely used in economic news are journey metaphor, war metaphor,human being metaphor, plant metaphor, animal metaphor, machinemetaphor, bubble metaphor, container metaphor, building metaphor,liquid metaphor, orientational metaphor as well as religion metaphor.Compared with metaphors in Chinese economic news and their mappingprocess, the thesis concludes that journey metaphor, war metaphor,human being metaphor, plant metaphor, animal metaphor, liquidmetaphor, machine metaphor, bubble metaphor, container metaphor, building metaphor, orientational metaphor are applied under the similarmapping condition both in Chinese and English economic news, whilereligion metaphor is applied under the different mapping conditions in thetwo languages.Based on the conclusion, under the guidance of Newmark’s view onmetaphor translation and the “Cognitive Translation Hypothesis”proposed by Mandelblit, the thesis, with abundant examples in economicnews, investigates the translation approaches of conceptual metaphors ineconomic news and recommends that there are two conditions for thetranslation of conceptual metaphors in English economic news: theSimilar Mapping Condition (SMC), which will be adopted when journeymetaphor, war metaphor, human being metaphor, plant metaphor, animalmetaphor, machine metaphor, bubble metaphor, liquid metaphor,container metaphor, building metaphor, orientational metaphor are usedand the “Different Mapping Condition”(DMC) will be adopted whenreligion metaphor is applied. Generally, when the first condition appears,literal translation will be adopted; when the second condition appears,adaptation or conversion of conceptual metaphors to sense will beadopted.