Translation Of WATER Metaphors In Shijing (The Book Of Songs)

Metaphor is a rhetorical device;“metaphor” and “translation” are of the same etymology,making them closely related to each other.As a primitive of Chinese poetry,Shijing(The Book of Songs),is full of metaphors.Starting with lines that contain the word “water”(水/shui)in Shijing,this thesis interprets the WATER metaphor in aspects of words,sentences and poems,so as to better understand the original text.On the basis of Newmark’s Semantic and Communicative Translation,this thesis analyzes the poems that contain the word “water”(水/shui)translated by James Legge and Xu Yuanchong.Finally,the thesis summarizes the translation strategies of WATER metaphor in Shijing,so that Chinese poetry and Chinese culture can better go global.The study finds that not all the poems with the word “water”(水/shui)in Shijing contain the WATER metaphor.WATER metaphor mainly refers to power,missing,sadness and human beings.When Legge and Xu translated the lines with the word “water”(水/shui)in Shijing,they seldom translated the metaphorical meaning of “water”,but mostly kept the image of “water”(水/shui)by translating the word “water”(水/shui).There were mistranslations of the word “water”(水/shui).In translating the metaphorical meaning of “water”,Legge and Xu embody the translation of WATER metaphor in three ways: adjectives;nouns;prepositions(including prepositional phrases).Comparing the translation of lines containing the WATER metaphor,we find it differs in terms of the application of Semantic and Communicative Translation: Legge has a preference for Semantic Translation;while Xu,Communicative Translation.When translating metaphors in poetry,we may start with the words or images of a metaphor and translate them on the basis of a correct understanding of the lines.If metaphor is directly revealed in lines,Semantic Translation can be adopted;if it runs through the whole poem,then Communicative Translation can be used.