A Study On Translation Of Metaphors In The Field Of Life And Death From The Perspective Of Conceptual Blending Theory

The Field of Life and Death was published in 1934.It is a landmark in Hsiao Hung's literary career.She earned a reputation of the "Anti-Japanese war writer" for the novel.Hsiao Hung's exquisite writing,Lu Xun's preface and Hu feng's postscript made the novel a classic text reflecting the national spirit of the times.The hardship and struggle of people in Northeast China before the outbreak of the war of aggression against China is described in the novel.There is the distinct literary status of The Field of Life and Death in cultural transmission.Although many scholars have studied the novel in recent years,few study its English translation.Howard Goldblatt is a famous translator and sinologist of Chinese contemporary literature.Over the years,his translation and research on Chinese literature has had a tremendous impact on the cultural exchanges between Clhina and the West.The English version of The Field of Life and Death was his first translation of Hsiao Hung's works,and later research on Hsiao Hung's life background and text style were in-depth study.Howard Goldblatt published Biography of Hsiao Hung and introduced her to the foreign readers.The principle of Howard Goldblatt's translation,which is embodied in the English version of this novel,is his respect for the source text without fear of the source text.In Metaphors We Live By,Lakoff and Mark Johnson proposed that metaphor is not limited to literary rhetoric but a key to explain human cognition.The essence of metaphor is mapping between abstract things and concrete things.Therefore,the viewpoint opened a new era in the study of conceptual metaphor theory.However,conceptual metaphor theory only relates to the single mapping between the source and the target domain.Cognitive activities are complex and diverse when constructing and inferring metaphorical meanings.Therefore,based on Lakoff and Johnson's research,Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner proposed conceptual blending theory under the extension of the theory of mental space.The conceptual blending theory aims to analyze how the metaphor mapping mechanism works on the basis of multiple spaces.The theory of conceptual blending shows great advantages in the interpretation of literary texts so that it becomes an important cognitive tool for interpreting.This thesis tries to study the metaphors in The Field of Life and Death and the corresponding translations from the perspective of conceptual blending theory.Combined with MIPVU(Metaphor Identification Procedure at VU University Amsterdam)upgraded by Steen and others in 2010,48 metaphorical expressions and relative translation in The Field of Life and Death were selected.Mainly guided by the conceptual blending theory,metaphorical systems were classified in the novel and their translation in Goldblatt's English version were analyzed in this thesis.The results show that:firstly,metaphorical systems used in the source text can be divided into five categories:the metaphor of color,the metaphor of suffering,the metaphor of movement,the metaphor of ghost,the metaphor of body;second,by analyzing the translation of different types of metaphorical systems,it is found that translator seeks more common ground while reserving fewer differences,namely,more domestication combines less foreignization as the main translation principle.There are three translation strategies:total-correspondence projection for reproducing source domain in target language;semi-correspondence projection for replacing source domain in target language and non-correspondence projection for integrating source domain.Based on the perspective of conceptual blending theory,the translation study of The Field of Life and Death not only reflects the Chinese cultural value and cultural connotation but also has an important significance for the Chinese culture to spread all over the world in the future.