A Cognitive Account of Metaphor Translation in Two Chinese Versions of The Wind in the Willows
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: Cognitive Metaphor Theory (CMT), originally formulated by Lakoff and Johnson in 1980, rejects the traditional view of metaphor being a rhetorical phenomenon, and redefines it as a cognitive instrument by which humans perceive, categorize, and conceptualize the world.The cognitive method of metaphor studies offers an innovative research perspective on metaphor translation, which is more a process of reproducing in the target language the mapping relations of the original metaphor than a simple transplantation of the concept on the linguistic level.Metaphor is one of the most common figures of speech in children's literature, but its translation is not as effortless as it might be, for translators have to take into account not only factors such as linguistic, cultural, and social differences, but also children's limited linguistic level and cognitive abilities, which altogether pose a formidable challenge to translators.This paper attempts to construct a cognitive metaphor translation model by exploring the cognitive process that translators go through when dealing with metaphor from the perspective of CMT.The cognitive metaphor translation process is specified as including three steps: metaphor comprehension, metaphor adjustment, and metaphor reconstruction.By analyzing metaphor examples extracted from two Chinese versions of The Wind in the Willows, a masterpiece of Kenneth Grahame in children's literature of Britain, this article summarizes metaphor translation techniques in children's literature.
Source: Language and Semiotic Studies
Institution: Xi'an International Studies University
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4366707339