A Cognitive Study On Translation Of Culture-loaded Metonymies In Teahouse:from The Perspective Of Construal Theory

Metonymy is regarded as a figure of speech in traditional rhetoric studies.Cognitive linguists have done a systematic research into metonymy from a new perspective.They redefined metonymy and proposed that metonymy is essentially a way of cognition and a tool of thinking.Abundant cognitive researches have been done about the nature,classification and operation mechanism of metonymy both at home and abroad,and recently metonymy translation is also drawing the interest of some scholar,but research about the cognitive mechanism of metonymy translation is still lack of attention.Besides,the cultural attributes of metonymy has been overlooked.This paper,using the construal theory in cognitive linguistics,carries out a cognitive study on the translation of culture-loaded metonymies in literary works.Construal is the core concept of cognitive linguistics.Langacker puts forward the idea that construal or conceptualization is a way of human cognition.Construal theory holds that the meaning of language is related to people's subjective ways of construing.In essence,translation is a process of conceptualizing the original scene,converting language form and reconstructing meaning.Therefore,construal is an important operation in conceptualizing the source text and constructing the target text in translation.The presentation of the construal dimensions provides the theoretical basis for the study of cognitive process in translation.Construal dimensions include scope / background,perspective,prominence and specificity.This study is based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis with Laoshe'sTeahouse and its English version by Ying Ruocheng as the data of study.From the perspective of construal dimensions,this thesis tries to analyze the translation principles of culture-loaded metonymy,identify ways of meaning conversion of the source vehicle and target tenor,and illustrate the cognitive operation mechanism of translation.This thesis aims to demonstrate the explanatory power of the construal theory on the cognitive process of metonymy translation and further facilitate the cognitive study of translation strategies of metonymies.Based on the analysis of Ying's English version of the book Teahouse,this study has demonstrated the importance of construal and conceptualization in the translation process,and has also found that there is close relationship between scope and encyclopedic knowledge,prominence and figure/background,specificity and cognitive effort.This study concludes the following three translation strategies:Retaining Source Vehicle(SV),Adopting Target Tenor(TT),Transforming into Oriented Meaning(TOM).In the process of intercultural translation,the translator should construe the source text from the cognitive perspective,understand the intention of author,and make the feeling of the target language readers equivalent to that of the source language readers.