A Study On English Translation Of Weapon Names In Jin Yong’s Martial Arts Novels From The Perspective Of Cognitive Metaphor

As a tool of human production activities,weapons are closely related to the progress and development of human society,and then evolved into weapons for war,gradually forming a unique weapon culture.Weapons not only have the function of fighting,but also are cultural-loaded words with metaphorical images,which are fully reflected in a large number of literary works.Especially in Jin Yong’s martial arts novels,the author’s description of weapons is very unique,showing readers hundreds of different weapons and rich weapon culture.The weapons in the novel can not only make the description of the martial arts scenes more magnificent,but also render the environmental atmosphere,and also play a role in promoting the story and highlighting the different personality characteristics of the characters,thus making the novel more literary.Studying the English translation of weapon names under the guidance of cognitive metaphor theory can not only understand the working mechanism of cognitive metaphor in the English translation of weapon names,enrich the research scope of cognitive metaphor theory,but also reveal that translation activities are not only a linguistic level,but also a change in thinking level.Thus,it is helpful to dig out the symbolic meaning and cultural connotation behind the weapon names,and it is of great significance to promote the spread and recognition of China traditional culture.From the perspective of cognitive metaphor,this paper takes the English translation of weapon names in Jin Yong’s martial arts novels as the research object,and based on some of the weapon names in the original text,analyzes the English translation process of weapon names in the only four published English versions of Jin Yong’s novels by using the methods of literature review,case analysis and interview,and summarizes three translation strategies according to the mapping relationship between the source domain and the target domain in the process,namely,the strategy of preserving vehicles and direct translation when the mapping relationship is equal;When the mapping relationship is partially equivalent,the strategy of replacing vehicles and transforming translation is adopted;When the mapping relationship is completely unequal,the translation strategy is to omit the vehicle and translate it freely as a whole.These translation strategies are applied to specific case studies to evaluate the translator’s translation and retranslate some weapons names that have not been translated in place.Finally,by means of interview,three foreigners whose native language is English are invited as the interviewees to test the translation effect of the English translation strategies of martial arts novels summarized in this paper.The purpose of this study is to explore the English translation strategies of martial arts novels’ weapon names from the perspective of cognitive metaphor,broaden the theoretical support for the English translation of weapon names and even martial arts,and provide English translation experience for the external communication of national traditional sports.At present,there are few studies on applying cognitive metaphor to English translation of weapons,so this paper can also provide reference for more English translation of weapons and martial arts in the future.