Metaphor Translation from the Perspective of Cognitive Linguistics

Metaphor Translation from the Perspective of Cognitive Linguistics

The psychological operation mechanism of metaphor fully embodies the positive role of human cognitive model in processing external information. How to analyze metaphor translation from the perspective of cognitive linguistics?

From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, metaphor is a mapping from source domain to destination domain. Metaphor is a common phenomenon in language, which embodies the close relationship between language and culture. There are great differences in the use of metaphors in different languages, which brings difficulties to the translation of metaphors. This paper intends to discuss the cognition, translatability and translation strategies of metaphor from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.

Cognitive Translation of Keyword Metaphor

1 Introduction

People use metaphors extensively to express their feelings. In recent years, with the increasing activity of metaphor research, many scholars try to explore metaphor translation from different angles, from theory to specific strategies. With the deepening of metaphor research, people are increasingly aware of the important role of metaphor's cognitive function in translation. This paper aims to study the theory of cognitive linguistics.

This paper discusses the translation strategies of metaphor under this framework from a cognitive perspective.

2 Cognitive essence of metaphor

The book that truly establishes the position of metaphor in cognition is Leikauf &; Metaphor We Live By was published by Johnson at 1980. This book opens up a new way to study metaphor from a cognitive perspective.

Cognitive metaphor theory holds that metaphor is a cognitive phenomenon and the most important feature of human abstract thinking, which also enables human beings to explain most abstract thinking. Metaphor includes two domains: source domain and target domain. The former is often a concrete thing that is known or familiar, while the latter is an abstract thing that is unfamiliar or unfamiliar. By mapping the source domain to the target domain, the target domain can be understood. Metaphor is an intermediary, which helps us to acquire new knowledge, understand and experience new things on the basis of personal experience and concepts formed by experience.

We know that the basis of metaphor is concept, and people often use metaphor to organize many abstract concepts with concrete or familiar images. Many important concepts come from our understanding of the world around us. People use metaphor because of the limitation of thinking ability or the lack of ready-made words or expressions in language, so they have to talk about something with another thing; Secondly, in order to better convey the meaning and obtain better communicative effect, people choose another thing to talk about something.

3 the translatability of metaphor

Cognitive linguistics is a linguistic school based on cognitive science and centered on semantics. Its argument is that semantics is conceptual, which is people's experience about the world and their response to cognitive things, and it is in line with the way and law of people's understanding of things. Cognitive linguistics emphasizes the important role of experience and cognition in language, and holds that language is the product of objective reality, social culture, physiological basis and cognitive ability. Any language phenomenon, including metaphorical language, is reasonable, that is, it can be analyzed and explained from the perspective of human psychology and cognition. However, from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, metaphor has physiological basis and psychological operation mechanism, that is, structural mapping from one conceptual domain to another.

Because human beings have the same physiological structure and the same psychological foundation, the experiences of different ethnic groups facing the same objective world are similar to a great extent, which leads to many metaphorical expressions of cognitive equivalence in the natural languages of different ethnic groups, such as: A castle in the air has a completely equivalent idiom in Chinese? Attic in the air? . However, because human experience comes from human beings and nature, and the interaction between people, social culture has also become an important factor affecting language.

The psychological operation mechanism of metaphor fully embodies the positive role of human cognitive model in processing external information. People in different cultural worlds have similarities and differences in the use of metaphors. The reader's understanding of metaphor is realized by the mapping of the conceptual domain contained in the source language metaphor in the target language concept. Therefore, whether cognitive equivalence can be achieved is the key to the success of translation mapping, which requires translators to choose appropriate translation strategies and methods.

4 Metaphor translation strategies

Nida pointed out that the so-called translation refers to the reproduction of source language information in the target language with the closest and most natural equivalent from semantics to style. ? In translation, translators should seek equivalence, not the same language. Based on the cognitive nature of metaphor, in order to achieve the equivalence of the target language, it is necessary for us to explore the translation of metaphor from a cognitive perspective. I think the following strategies can be adopted: 4. 1 equivalent strategy? Equivalence mapping from source domain to target domain in English and Chinese metaphors

Although there are many ethnic groups in the world, and each ethnic group has its own language, the experience gained by human beings facing the same objective world is similar to a great extent, which leads to great similarity in cognitive understanding. Therefore, there are bound to be many metaphors in different national languages that map the source domain to the target domain in the same way. For the translation of this kind of metaphor, we can use the same conceptual domain to map through the equivalent mapping of metaphor concepts, so that the target readers can get the same reaction as the original readers.

For example, based on the metaphorical concept that time is money, there are many metaphorical expressions based on this structure in English: You are wasting my time, what is the specific concept? Money? ) to represent abstract concepts (? Time? ) in the cognitive field. The Chinese nation also cherishes time very much. Time is money? The concept of metaphor and many expressions of metaphor, such as? An inch of time and an inch of gold? 、? Cherish time like gold? Wait a minute.

Equivalent translation strategy is suitable for metaphors with complete cognitive correspondence in English and Chinese. It not only reflects the content of the original text, but also retains the national cultural color of the original metaphor and the source metaphor, which is helpful for the target language readers to know more about the cultural characteristics of the source language. 4.2 conversion strategy

If we can't keep the expression form of English metaphor with equivalence strategy, we can find the appropriate corresponding metaphor in Chinese to express the meaning of English metaphor. This translation strategy is called transformation strategy. The conversion strategy mainly includes the following two situations. 4.2. 1 Map English and Chinese metaphors from the source domain to the equivalent target domain.

Cognitive linguistics holds that language is the result of people's organizing experience in the cognitive objective world, and human experience comes from the interaction between man and nature and between people. Due to the differences in social environment, historical traditions and religious beliefs, different nationalities may use images from different source domains to map the same target domain when using metaphors. This requires the translator to change the image in the source domain of the original metaphor in order to achieve meaning equivalence. 4.2.2 Remove the image of the source domain in English and Chinese metaphors and translate the meaning of the target domain.

The primary task of translation is to translate the content of information, that is, to translate the meaning of the original text. When the image of the source domain in metaphor is very strange to the target reader, but it seems obscure when translated into the translation, or its image will cause different associations, and its image is insignificant in the context, then we only need to deduce the meaning of its mapping and roughly translate it. 4.3 Alienation strategy? Transplanting the mapping from the source domain to the target domain of metaphor in the original text

The function of translation is not only the exchange of information, but also the exchange of culture. In the process of translation, we sometimes encounter metaphors with unique cultural connotations. Because there is no identical metaphor concept or similar conceptual domain mapping in the target language culture, it is impossible to change the source domain image of the original metaphor in the target language, because the change will cause the loss of meaning, so the translator can transplant this metaphor with unique cultural connotation into the target language. Transplantation is a concrete form of cultural exchange to satisfy people's psychology of seeking differences.

There are many transplanted metaphors in Chinese. Such as wooden horses. There are also metaphors transplanted from Chinese in English, such as paper tigers. With the increasing communication between different nationalities and the convergence of different cognition, it is more and more possible to transplant this metaphor into translation. This strategy enriches the language expression of the target language and better realizes the purpose of cultural exchange.

5 conclusion

In a word, metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon, but also a basic cognitive way of human beings. It is the mapping from one conceptual domain to another, that is, the mapping from the source domain to the target domain. In the process of metaphor translation, the translator's work is a cross-disciplinary activity. In order to achieve equivalence between the original text and the translated text, it is necessary for us to study metaphor translation strategies from a cognitive perspective.

References:

Leikauf & Johnson. Metaphor by which we live. University of Chicago Press, 1980.

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[3] Shu people. Metaphor research [m]. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 200 1.28.

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