A Comparative Study Of Wolf Metaphors In Chinese Novel Langtuteng And Its English Version

Traditionally, metaphor is regarded as a figure of speech, or a linguistic phenomenon based on word level. But this view has changed since 1980 s. Scholars try to study the phenomenon of metaphor from the perspective of cognition. In 1980, Lakoff and Johnson put forward conceptual metaphor theory, which promotes metaphor studies from a linguistic phenomenon to a way of thinking and cognition. Since then, scholars have carried out a series of studies on cognitive metaphor theory, including animal metaphor, emotional metaphor, and so on.In recent years, with the development of wolf’s novels, the wolf in the literary works is becoming more and more prominent. The spread of wolf literature is an inevitable trend. In those literary works which regard wolf as the main description object, Langtuteng is the only one to get the Asian Literature Award, so it is more representative. And globalization has made the cultural exchanges more and more frequent, and a comparative study of wolf metaphors is more conducive to spread Chinese cultures. Therefore, this thesis is devoted to a comparative study of wolf metaphors based on conceptual metaphor theory, and to analyze the similarities and differences. It also summarizes the translation tactics applied in translating those wolf metaphors and the reasons for using such different tactics.After the study, the author found that there are four types of wolf metaphors in Langtuteng according to the different mapping of the target domain. They are “WOLVES ARE HUMAN BEINGS”, “WOLVES ARE SUPERNATURAL BEINGS”, “WOLVES ARE OTHER ANIMALS”, and “WOLVES ARE THINGS”. Each class contains a number of small categories, which make the wolf’s image more vivid and specific. But due to the different cognitive structure, cultural environment and personal experience, in English translation, the translator does not preserve all the original metaphors. Instead, he takes certain translation tactics, such as transplanting mappings, substituting mappings, supplementing mappings and deleting mappings, through which the translator modifies the original wolf metaphors, making them more in line with the English logical thinking and expression.This thesis makes a comparative study of wolf metaphors from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, which not only supports the cognitive linguistic view of metaphor, but also highlights the significance of wolf metaphor in cross-culture research. And it has a certain reference value to the translation of animal metaphor as well.