A Report On The E-C Translation Of A Romance Of Two Worlds (Chapters 1-3)

Based on translation examples,this thesis explores the practical application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory in translating literary texts of novels.The source text of this thesis is excerpted from British writer Mary Corelli’s A Romance of Two Worlds,a novel with supernatural and science fiction elements.It describes the protagonist’s quest for religious truths and human destinies.The translation of this text can make the target language readers from different cultural backgrounds experience,understand and get familiar with the cognitive characteristics of the relationship between science and religion in the 1880 s.With the continuous development and improvement of cognitive linguistics,metaphor is regarded as a kind of innate cognitive means for people to know the world to a large extent and a way of thinking based on our own life experiences.To understand the world around us and to explore the unknown,we must take the existing ideas of mind and body and map them into the unknown.Compared with traditional metaphor theory,conceptual metaphor has the advantage that it can reveal the cognitive form in the text more comprehensively,which is conducive to readers’ in-depth interpretation of literary works and a more thorough understanding of the hidden meaning in the text.Therefore,by using conceptual metaphors to analyze the text,the translator can better grasp the author’s writing thoughts and solve the difficulties encountered in the process of text translation by adopting appropriate translation methods from the cognitive level.This thesis will be divided into five parts.Chapter One introduces the source text of this translation practice,A Romance of Two Worlds,and the significance of translating this text.Chapter Two describes the translation process in detail,which includes the preparation before translation,the selection of translation tools,and the formulation of translation plans.Chapter Three introduces the theory of conceptual metaphor and its influence and inspiration on this translation practice.In the case analysis section of Chapter Four,under the guidance of conceptual metaphor theory,the translator selects example sentences with research significance in the source text,from Orientational Metaphor(Up-Down;Front-Back;In-Out),Ontological Metaphor(Entity Metaphor;Container Metaphor;Anthropomorphic Metaphor)and Structural Metaphor(“Pain is Enemy”;“Wonderful Things are Friends”)three research perspectives to summarize and analyze the cases of metaphors appearing in A Romance of Two Worlds,carries on the translation of the original text,and tests the feasibility and effectiveness of using conceptual metaphor theory to translate novel texts.In the Chapter Five,the translator summarizes the translation practice,draws from the literary translation experience under the guidance of conceptual metaphor theory,and hopes that the translation experience can provide more useful reference for the translation work of this type of text in the future.