A Cognitive Study On The English Translation Of Female Metaphors In Li Bai's Poems About Women

Known by the nick name of “Immortal Poet”,Chinese poet Li Bai has made great contributions to classical Chinese culture.His poems endure through the ages at home and abroad.With the policy of “Belt and Road Initiative” and the goal of “Building Cultural Soft Power” proposed in the new era,translations of Li Bai's poems into different languages emerge endlessly.Li Bai has long been renowned for his romantic and unstrained poetry.However,his poems about women with euphemism also bear a unique favor,worth of attentions.Metaphors expressed through various images in poetry have aroused people's keen interest for a long time and they play an important role in readers' general understanding of poetry.Thus,it can be seen that the significance of metaphor translation for external dissemination can never be underestimated.Although there is no lack of studies about metaphor translation in poetry,most of them emphasize its semantic or rhetorical equivalence with only a few studies on its cognitive equivalence and not all the translation methods and strategies they offered are suitable for the metaphor translation in different texts.What the thesis focuses on is the English translation of female metaphors in Li Bai's poems about women.Based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory,the thesis first summarizes the types of female metaphors in Li Bai's poems about women with text analysis,and then explores the reasons for the existence of female metaphors.Finally,in combination with Al-Hasnawi's Cognitive Translation Hypothesis(CTH),contrast analysis is applied to exploring translation strategies for female metaphors in these poems.To ensure the representativeness and authority of the translation,the translators selected here include Japanese translator Shigeyoshi Obata,American translators Amy Lowell and Florence Asycough,and Chinese translators Zhao Yanchun,Xu Yuanchong and Sun Yu.Eleven types of female metaphors have been summarized and they are namely FEMALE IS A FLOWER,FEMALE IS GRASS,FEMALE IS A BIRD,FEMALE IS CLOUD,FEMALE IS WATER,FEMALE IS WIND,FEMALE IS SNOW,FEMALE IS A FAN,FEMALE IS JADE,FEMALE IS HUMAN ORGAN,and FEMALE IS A GODDESS.Besides,it has been found that the reasons for employment of these female metaphors are closely related to the inheritance and development of poetic tradition,the functions of metaphors in poetry and the poet's life experience and personal temperament.It is confirmed that Al-Hasnawi's CTH can be well applied to female metaphor translation,which stresses the mapping equivalence in the source language(SL)and in the target language(TL)with the aim of achieving the cognitive equivalence in TL.Corresponding to Al-Hasnawi's three schemes,translation strategies are put forward as follows:(1)under similar mapping conditions(SMC)and similar lexical implementations(SLI),there are two strategies for translating female metaphors including retaining Chinese metaphors or retaining Chinese metaphors with compensation;(2)under SMC but different lexical implementations(DLI),the strategy of replacing Chinese source domain with a similar English source domain is recommended;(3)under different mapping conditions(DMC)and DLI,two strategies include retaining Chinese source domain with compensation or converting Chinese source domain into the target domain.Li Bai's poems about women are rich in connotation and of great value.It is sincerely hoped that scholars and readers who adore Li Bai's poetry can have a deeper acquaintance with Li Bai's poems about women.It is also hoped that some enlightenments for poetry translation can be given from the perspective of cognition and my ongoing efforts can be devoted to the promotion of Chinese poetry translation.