On The Translation Of The Merchant Of Venice From The Perspective Of Cognitive Metaphor

Based on Lakoff and Johnson’s theory of metaphor and taken The Merchant of Venice for the analysis of corpora, the paper explores the metaphorical devices used in the play, its distributions, functions and meanings, to analyze the mapping relationship in detail and to explore the cognitive mechanism of metaphor.Shakespeare uses rhetorical devices in The Merchant of Venice in a large number. In light of the statistics, he employs simile20times, metaphor15times, personification20times, symbolism7times, metonymy8times, hyperbole15times, analogy4times, rhetorical questions8times, parallelism10times, antithesis12times and and pun9times. This paper discusses the characteristics of the so called two "prose" translators Liang Shiqiu and Zhu Shenghao in their translation of Shakespeare’s works and exemplifies the differences in the translations of rhetorical devices of the two. Liang Shiqiu consistently adopts the "literal translation" method. The translation for the rhetorical devices are faithful to the original plays, as a result of which his translations are more or less "smoothless" while Zhu Shenghao employs "free translation" way, namely he puts the original contents in the "melting pot", and then tries to translate, so the translations are unobstructed and widely introduced.This paper mainly explores the differences for the translations of the rhetorical devices in the Merchant of Venice of the two versions translated by Zhu Shenghai and Liang Shiqiu and the root causes of the two kinds of translations:the former comprehensions, translation strategies, academic attainments, aesthetic consciousness, etc. On the translation of the rhetorical devices, Zhu Shenghao has the drawback of "distortion", that is to say, some places are transcribed, which is a pity, but overall Zhu’s translation of Shakespeare’s works is a better one and his contribution is greater than his faults.