Research On Metaphor Translation From The Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory

The cognitive turn of metaphor research has witnessed the evolvement of metaphor from an ornamental trope to an essential instrument of human thought.It pervades virtually all kinds of discourse.However,traditional studies,mainly taking it as a rhetorical device,have often concentrated on literary texts with various innovative metaphors.In contrast,much less attention has been paid to metaphors in non-literary texts.Moreover,existing translation studies focuses exclusively on studying single metaphorical expression in isolation by means of "image" analysis,instead of metaphorical coherence presented in an extended section of discourse.As a result,it may be unfavorable to a coherent presentation of information in the translated text and then to a systematic understanding of abstract concepts by target readers.This thesis explores the methods for translating metaphors in non-literary texts by drawing on the English monograph Investing in Financial Research-A Decision-Making System for Better Results,along with its Chinese translation.The book,introducing a decision-making method named the AREA Method,has just named an Award-Winning Finalist in the Business:Entrepreneurship&Small Business category of the 2019 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book Fest.Employing the conceptual metaphor theory proposed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson as its theoretical framework,this thesis explores the role of the four core conceptual metaphors,including the JOURNEY,BUILDING,HUNT and GAME metaphors,in the concept formation of the source text from the perspective of metaphorical coherence,aiming at attracting more attention of scholars and translators to metaphorical language in non-literary texts.Within the context of descriptive translation studies,at the same time,this thesis summarizes a set of methods for translating such metaphors based upon the cognitive concept of "image schema",instead of the objective concept of "image",in an attempt to provide new insights for the creation of more readable translated texts of the non-literary type.The case analysis ultimately gives birth to two conclusions as follows:1)The value of conceptual metaphors in non-literary texts is reflected in the dimension of metaphorical coherence,including intra-metaphorical and inter-metaphorical coherence.The coherent feature of conceptual metaphors can help readers obtain a systematic and accurate understanding of various abstract concepts in non-literary texts,thus deserving due attention in translation;2)For metaphorical expressions in non-literary texts,lexicalized metaphors in particular,six translation methods are provided in this thesis:same image schematic representation,instantiating only a functional aspect of the ST image schema,using a different rich image that realizes the ST image schema,same image schema and rich image domains,same rich image but alerting the reader to the mapping,and rendering metaphor into non-metaphor.