1. Introduction
1.1 Background of the Research
Since two thousand years, the study of metaphor has begun and made certainachievements. However, the main trend of metaphor study is still restricted to a rhetoricaldevice both at home and abroad. With the deepening of the researches, there are a great manynew theories about metaphor emerging successively. Until 1980, a revolution that happened inthe field of western translation had changed traditional point of view. That is, Metaphors WeLive By (1980) is published by Lakoff and Johnson, which marks the cognitive turning in thewestern academic circle. What’s more, it also establishes the basement of further metaphorstudies. In this book, they put forth that metaphor is closely linked with our daily life.Metaphor is not just a rhetorical device, but a way of cognitive thinking. The nature ofmetaphor is to understand and experience one term by means of another one. Besides,Conceptual Metaphor Theory provides a new perspective for metaphor translation.Big Breasts and Wide Hips is a representative work of Mo Yan, who was the firstChinese writer awarded Noble Prize for literature in 2012. Many of his works are translatedinto different languages by Howard Goldblatt who is regarded as one of the best Americantranslators and these translation works have gained popularity among the western readers allover the world in recent years. Without exception, since Big Breasts and Wide Hips waspublished, it has been stirring up intense debates among readers and scholars because of itscontent. This work is deeply influenced by hallucinatory realism. In the novel, there are alarge number of metaphorical expressions to reflect the theme and the local culture of thenovel. A major portion of the success of the English version can be attributed to thetranslation methods adopted by Howard Goldblatt. Therefore, it is necessary to study thetranslation strategies with the theoretical support of the generation mechanism from thecognitive perspective.
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1.2 Significance of the Research
Metaphor is widely present in our daily language. It is an indisputable fact that we cannot live without metaphor. From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, metaphor is a way ofcognitive thinking to understand physical experiences. The previous studies rarely payattention to literary works. There are a large number of metaphors with strong culturalcharacteristics in Big Breasts and Wide Hips, which is beneficial for the spread of the localculture and the expression of the author’s ideas. However, it is difficult for non-native speakers to understand the implicit meaning. On the basis of Conceptual Metaphor Theory,metaphor translation is the mapping of the source text onto the target text. Thus, in order tomake the target readers understand the metaphorical meaning, the strategies of translatingmetaphors adopted by Howard Goldblatt is worth studying. The significance of the study isshown below: Firstly, through the analysis of the conceptual metaphors in Big Breasts andWide Hips, readers can understand the metaphorical meaning of these metaphors with the aidof Conceptual Metaphor Theory. What’s more, as a way of cognitive thinking, metaphor hasbeen integrated into our daily life. It is necessary for us to understand and master how itcomes into being. Secondly, this thesis provides a new perspective for metaphor translation inliterary works. Therefore, it is helpful to the introduction of Chinese literary works to all overthe world and the promotion of the cultural communication of both sides.
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2. Literature Review
It is an indisputable fact that metaphor is widely present in our daily language. As arhetorical device, metaphor has been a heated topic in the philosophy and linguistics for morethan two thousand years. When people start to explore the mystery of metaphor from the ageof Aristotle, the study of metaphor is no longer “patent” in the field of rhetorics. It has gonefrom rhetoric to linguistics, cognitive psychology, and further extended to semantics andpragmatics. In this chapter, metaphor is presented from its basic definitions.
2.1 Definition of Metaphor
The word “metaphor” is originated from the Greek word “metaphora” that is composedof “meta” and “pherein” which mean “over” and “to carry” respectively. It is a kind oftransformation. Most of modern theories tend to interpret metaphor in this way.Until today, there is no general agreement on standard definition of metaphor that isgenerally accepted by various schools so that theorists and scholars try to make differentdefinitions from different perspectives. Therefore, we can find a number of definitions ofmetaphor in various dictionaries. Most of the definitions of metaphor in Chinese dictionariescan be found are summed up as following: it is a kind of analogy and it is usually regarded asa device to modify another subject or another conception by the phrases, such as “like”, “turn”,“as” etc. The precondition is that these two concepts have similarities. It is not hard to see thatthese definitions in Chinese dictionaries mainly stay on the rhetoric form and the function ofmetaphor, which can not reflect the change of metaphor from a rhetorical device to the way ofcognitive thinking. And at the same time, the mainstream of English dictionaries and themetaphor researches both have given similar definitions of metaphor. For example: Metaphoris a figure of speech by comparing two different things without using the phrases “like” or“as”. From the above definitions, it can be seen that metaphor is always regarded as a figureof speech whether in the authoritative Chinese dictionaries or English dictionaries. Thesedefinitions are still restricted to just to the traditional field of metaphor.
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2.2 Previous Studies of Metaphor
Based on the traditional metaphor researches, the studies of metaphor have beeninnovated constantly all the time. During the rhetoric period, metaphor is regarded as a figureof speech that is “additional”. With the development of cognitive science, more and morescholars begin to study on metaphor from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. And at thesame time, the “cognitive turn” makes the research of metaphor as an independent subject. Inrecent years, a great many scholars have made studies on metaphor and they find that thesestudies involve many other fields, such as cognitive psychology, cognitive linguistics,philosophy, semantics, pragmatics and so on. Thus, it is necessary to study the developmentof Chinese metaphor and the western metaphor that lay the foundation for further metaphorstudies.The west has made a more systematic study of metaphor since 300 BC, including twoimportant masterpieces of Aristotle: Poetics and Rhetorics. In general, there are three mainkinds of traditional metaphor theories: Comparison Theory, Substitution Theory andInteraction Theory. Comparison Theory regards metaphor as a rhetorical means; andSubstitution Theory has further developed Comparison theory, and received strong support;and Interaction Theory is first put forward by I. A. Richards and then developed by M. Black,which is different from the other two theories.
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3. Theoretical Framework.......13
3.1 Definition of Conceptual Metaphor.........13
3.2 Classification of Conceptual Metaphor........... 14
3.2.1 Structural Metaphor........14
3.2.2 Orientational Metaphor...........14
3.2.3 Ontological Metaphor.....14
3.3 Working Mechanism of Conceptual Metaphor: Cross-Domain Mapping....15
3.4 The Experiential Basis of Metaphor........ 17
4. Analysis of Types of Metaphors of Thematic Images in Big Breastsand Wide Hips...........19
4.1 Introduction to Big Breasts and Wide Hips.....19
4.2 Conceptual Metaphors in Big Breasts and Wide Hips....21
4.3 Breast Metaphor.........22
4.3.1 Types of Breast Metaphor......23
4.4 Animal Metaphor.......27
5. Analysis of Translation Strategies of Metaphors of Thematic Imagesin...........39
5.1 Translation of Metaphor into the Same or Similar Metaphor........40
5.2 Translation of Metaphor into a Different Metaphor.......43
5.3 Translation of Metaphor into Non-Metaphor..........45
5.4 Translation by Deleting the Metaphor.....47
5.5 Translation of Metaphor into Simile........49
5. Analysis of Translation Strategies of Metaphors of ThematicImages in Big Breasts and Wide Hips
In Chapter Four, the author has made an exhaustive study on breast metaphors andanimal metaphors which occupy a large percentage in the novel. Through the cognitiveanalysis of these conceptual metaphors, it gives a new insight into the study of metaphortranslation. According to Conceptual Metaphor Theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson,metaphor is not only a figure of speech, but also a cognitive way of thinking. In other words,metaphor translation is not only the symbolic transference of a language, but also acomplicated cognitive activity. That is to say, metaphor translation is also a cognitive activitythat human beings can understand the experience of the target language in terms of the sourcelanguage. Metaphor is the mapping of cross-domain. Each mapping is the connection of thesource domain and the target domain of metaphor. Similarly, in the process of metaphortranslation, the similarities and associations between the source domain and the target domainis the basis.So, to what extent does Howard Goldblatt keep faithful to the original, and to whatextent does he deviate the original? What strategies does Howard Goldblatt adopt in theprocess of translation in order to achieve the metaphorical meaning of the conceptualmetaphors in the original? These questions are worth studying in this chapter. In Chapter Two,the author has mentioned Newmark’s (Newmark, 2001b) seven steps of metaphor translation.Based on Newmark’s metaphor translation theory, the author makes an analysis of translationstrategies of conceptual metaphors of these thematic images in Big Breasts and Wide Hips,namely metaphor to the same or similar metaphor; metaphor to a different metaphor;metaphor to a non-metaphor; deletion; metaphor to simile according to the mapping betweenthe source domain and the target domain.According to the metaphorical meanings and the target domains of breast metaphorsand animal metaphors, 53 examples are selected to make an exhaustive illustration andexplanation. In order to make the conclusion more convincing, the frequency of fourstrategies is shown in Table 5.1:#p#分页标题#e#
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Conclusion
Conceptual Metaphor Theory is proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) gives anentirely new angle to analyze metaphors in Big Breasts and Wide Hips. What’s more, it alsogives great inspiration for metaphor translation. According to this theory, metaphor is not onlya figure of speech, but also a figure of thought. Compared with metaphor study, the study ofmetaphor translation is neglected and relatively backward. There are a body of characteristicmetaphors in Big Breasts and Wide Hips, so it is worthy of being studied. Under the guidanceof Conceptual Metaphor Theory, the author of the paper tries to make a systematic study ofbreast metaphor and animal metaphor in Big Breasts and Wide Hips so as to make a summaryof relevant translation strategies. There are some results of this thesis as shown below:Firstly, based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory, there are two main metaphorssummarized in Big Breasts and Wide Hips: the breast metaphor and the animal metaphor. Inorder to make a systematic study, the author retrieves all the “breast” terms and seven kinds of“animal” terms from the original novel by the software Ant Conc. The thesis is mainly basedon the qualitative analysis, and partially based on description and explanation. Thesemetaphors are projected onto different target domains respectively: mother, earth, universe,substance and human beings.Secondly, according to Conceptual Metaphor Theory, metaphor translation is instructedby the cognitive thinking and its working mechanism is the cross-domain. Through theanalysis of these conceptual metaphors in Big Breasts and Wide Hips, there are fivetranslation strategies are adopted in the process of translation:
(1) The original metaphor istranslated into the same or similar metaphor in target text. When both sides of thecommunication have the same or similar experience and share the same or similar cognitivethinking model, the translator is inclined to use the same or similar metaphor in the target textto replace the original metaphor in the source text. In this way, it would help to keep theflavor of the original text, and arouse similar reaction among the target readers;
(2) Theoriginal metaphor is translated by a different image in the target text. When both sides of thecommunication have different experiences and different ways of the cognitive thinking, thetranslator prefers to use a standard target metaphor that is beneficial for the target readers tounderstand and at the same time avoid any misunderstanding.
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The reference (omitted)
