An Analysis Of The English Translation Of Metaphors From The Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Metaphor serves not only as a special form of language,but also as a basic way for human beings to conceptualize the world.As the most basic conceptual system underlying human thought and action,metaphor is an important mechanism for understanding abstract concepts and things.In essence,it is a mapping from a specific and familiar source domain to an abstract and unfamiliar target domain.As a political and theoretical work created by General Secretary Xi Jinping during his work in Ningde from 1988 to 1990,Up and Out of Poverty contains 29 important speeches and research articles.Its English version was jointly translated and published by the China International Publishing Group and Fujian People’s Publishing House,which has promoted the international community’s in-depth understanding of China’s experience in poverty alleviation.The conceptual metaphors in the book play an important role in conveying political information and strengthening the persuasiveness of political discourse.However,few studies have been conducted on the translation of the conceptual metaphors in Up and Out of Poverty.In this study,the original Chinese and English versions of Up and Out of Poverty are used to create a bilingual corpus.The metaphorical expressions in the source text are identified with the help of metaphor identification procedure(MIP).And then they are classified according to the frequencies of metaphorical expressions retrieved by Communication University of China parallel corpus retrieval software(CUC Para Conc),Lakoff & Johnson’s(2003)classification of metaphors and K?vecses’ s(2002)classification of metaphors.Then,based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory,analysis and discussion are made on the mapping mechanism of the translation of the conceptual metaphors in the source text of Up and Out of Poverty as well as the translation methods adopted by the translator to deal with the conceptual metaphors in the source text and to transform the non-metaphorical expressions in the source text into conceptual metaphors.This study has some important findings.The frequencies of structural metaphors,ontological metaphors and orientational metaphors are 1257,1197 and 665 respectively,which is quite high for such a political text of its kind and needs to be addressed carefully in translation.In terms of their different source domains,these three types of conceptual metaphors can be further subdivided into journey metaphors,building metaphors,war metaphors,climate metaphors,music metaphors,disease metaphors,container metaphors,circle metaphors,plant metaphors,human metaphors,animal metaphors,water metaphors,machine metaphors,up/down metaphors,front/back metaphors,near/far metaphors and others.Secondly,the translator should correctly understand the original metaphorical mappings and fully express them in the target text in terms of bodily experience,cultural experience,geographical environment,context and other factors that affect the translation of metaphors.An analysis of the mapping mechanism of conceptual metaphor is conducive to exploring the important role of conceptual metaphors and their translation in conveying political information.Thirdly,the translation methods adopted to translate the conceptual metaphors in the source text mainly include preservation,replacement and deletion of metaphors.In addition,the supplement of metaphors in the target text is used to enhance the systematicity of conceptual metaphors in the source text and to increase the readability of the target text.In conclusion,the findings of this study could not only enrich the research perspective of conceptual metaphors and complement the translation theory of metaphors to some extent,but also provide some reference for the translation of the conceptual metaphors in other similar political texts.