Studies On The English Translation Of Chinese Metaphors From The Perspective Of Cognition

The study of metaphor has a long history of more than 2,000 years.However,during the long period,almost all the traditional metaphor studies regard the metaphor as a figure of speech or a category of linguistics.In fact,apart from this function,it is primarily a way of thinking and cognizing.Since the 20th century,the development of many subjects,such as cognitive psychology,philosophy,and cognitive science,provides the opportunity for the breakthrough of metaphor studies.In 1980,the publication of Metaphors We Live By written by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson marked the metaphor study breaking the shackle of rhetoric which looked as the rhetorical device to modify and polish the language for a long time,which achieved the turn from rhetoric to cognitive science as well stepped into the cognitive field.The breakthrough makes the metaphor study be in a new high level,and opens a window for the metaphor translation study.Camel Xiangzi,a masterpiece of Lao She,contains so many metaphors especially the human conceptual metaphors and idiom metaphors which are valuable for the studies on the English translation of Chinese metaphors.This paper will classify the metaphors into three categories,including two conceptual metaphors(people are compared to concrete tangible objects and abstract intangible objects respectively)and idiom metaphors.By analyzing a large number of metaphors in Camel Xiangzi and their English translation,this paper will summarize the common strategies of translating the Chinese metaphor into English,such as translating literally,explaining and paraphrasing the meaning,applying model translation and changing the image.This paper aims to provide a valuable reference for the further metaphor translation studies.