Translating Metaphors From The Cognitive Perspective

In everyday life,metaphors not only exist in daily communication but also are applied widely in the professional fields,including economy,technology,law and etc.Metaphors are always viewed as a kind of rhetorical device,which is confined to the language field.People tend to ignore that metaphors can also reflect the way of thinking.Free of the traditional rhetoric’s constraints,cognitive linguistics put forward to study the metaphor from the cognitive perspective.This not only provides a new angle to study metaphors but also works out a new way to do research on metaphor translation.Based on the translation practice on the textbook,Global Marketing(9th Edition),this report explores the metaphor translation from the cognitive perspective.As the textbook is written with great humor and ease,it is vital to deal with the metaphor translation properly so as to facilitate target readers’ understanding.Firstly,this report reviews the traditional and cognitive views on metaphors respectively and discusses the classification of metaphors based on the cognitive linguists’ views.Then,this report explores the working mechanism of cognitive metaphors and finds out the mapping system of cognitive metaphors can facilitate translators’ understanding of metaphors.Based on the “similar mapping conditions” and “different mapping conditions”,this report summarizes two translation strategies,which are retaining and replacing.