On Translation of Animal Metaphors     

叶航  冷园 《海外英语》2012,(3):170-175

Metaphors have been described as a central role of our cognitive apparatus. It is central to our understanding of how language, thought and discourse are structured. Animal metaphors as an important part of metaphors take advantage of the animals’ characteristics to describe a person or a thing vividly and chiefly. Sometimes animal metaphors will give people a humorous and novel picture. In linguistics, it can fill in the vacancy in languages, and make the expression exact and visually. Metaphor is kind of figure of speech. The thesis analyzes the function and style of metaphor and discusses the metaphors’ structure in grammar. How we understand the animal’s meaning is the key to translate the animal metaphors. All the animal words have both denotative meanings and connotative meanings. In most cases, the animals connotative meanings are the same or similar. People usually have the same idea about the animals; therefore, even the people who do not know English can understand some animal metaphors However, due to his tory, religion, phonetics, geography, life style, aesthetics and social psychology, the animals’ connotative meanings are different or even con trary. Facing these problems, how we translate the animal metaphors. I find four methods: adaptation, simile with explanation, paraphrase, and annotation. Adaptation is very efficient for the animal metaphors, which have counterpart in Chinese. Simile-with-explanation is the commonest method to translate animal metaphors, which are similar across the cultures easy to comprehend. Paraphrase is the last method to translate animal metaphors, and especially it can deal with any case that the animal metaphors are profound. Annotation is used to trans late animal metaphors in context, particularly in written English. Using the four methods, we can translate animal metaphors successfully. And while we are doing translation, we should understand English animals’ name very well, and pay attention to the Chinese animals’ meaning to make sure our readers understand the author’s in tended meanings. The thesis consists of five parts. The first part of the thesis states the significance and necessity of topic, problems to be solved in the thesis, and the framework of the thesis. The second part is literature review. The third part analyzes the animal vocabulary’s meanings. The fourth part gives four methods to do the animal metaphors translation. The conclusion part reviews the whole thesis and points out the weakness to be improved.  相似文献