论文总字数：61992字

摘 要

随着中国综合国力的发展和国际地位的提升，中国形象也成为了世界舞台上浓墨重彩的一笔。孔子学院是中国对外宣传的窗口之一，自创办以来，其期刊在对外宣传中起到了平台作用。在翻译时，含有隐喻的文本翻译有时会产生分歧，因为隐喻之中蕴含着深厚的文化因素，各个国家文化的不同会导致读者对隐喻的深层含义产生不同的理解。本文研究《孔子学院》期刊英译本中隐喻翻译的海外认知度，即英语母语使用者对隐喻翻译的认知情况。

研究通过认知实验法和定量分析法，选择《孔子学院》期刊中“中国风尚”、“文化博览”、“说古论今”三大文化专栏，统计所有出现的隐喻并按照Lakoff 和Johnson（1980）的分类方法将隐喻分为空间隐喻、实体隐喻、结构隐喻。之后运用认知实验法，结合受众年龄、性别、教育程度、职业、地域、是否来过中国、汉语学习情况等多个社会属性自变量，运用Raphael Berthele(2010)提及的格式塔认知模型开展问卷调查实验，回收分析实验数据，借助SPSS 20统计软件，对格式塔实验数据进行分析，以考察及分析海外受众对译本中隐喻的认知情况，并进一步探讨受众社会属性各个自变量与认知度关系。

研究表明，被试对于空间隐喻翻译的认知度最高，其次是结构隐喻，总体情况为积极，最低为实体隐喻，总体情况为消极，但是认知度差异不是很大。经过分析，结构隐喻、空间隐喻翻译的认知度与社会属性变量无明显相关性。但是，实体隐喻翻译的认知程度与被试的职业、在中国所待的时间具有一定的相关关系，没有工作的人比有工作的人更能接受实体隐喻翻译，在中国待的时间越短的人越能接受实体隐喻翻译。

关键词：隐喻翻译；海外认知度；《孔子学院》期刊

Table of Contents

Acknowledgement i

Abstract ii

Table of Contents v

List of Tables vii

List of figures viii

Chapter One Introduction 1

1.1. Background of the Study 1

1.2. Significance and Purpose of the Study 2

1.3. Layout of the Thesis 2

Chapter Two Literature Review 4

2.1 Publicity-oriented Translation 4

2.1.1 The Academic History and Research Trends of Related Research in China 4

2.1.2 The Academic History and Research Trends of Related Research Abroad 6

2.1.3 Summary 7

2.2 Metaphor 7

2.2.1 Classifications of Metaphors 7

2.2.2 Translation of Chinese Metaphors 8

2.2.3 Summary 9

Chapter Three Research Methodology 10

3.1 Research Questions 10

3.2 Research Materials 10

3.3 Participants 11

3.4 Date Collection and Analysis 11

Chapter Four Result and Discussion 15

4.1 Reception of Translation of Metaphors 15

4.2 Correlation between Reception and Social Variables 18

Chapter Five Conclusion 23

5.1 Major Findings 23

5.2 Limitations and Suggestions 24

References 25

Appendix 28

List of Tables

Table 1: The overall situation of various types of metaphor 15

Table 2: Correlation between social attributes and reception of translation 19

Table 3: Model Summary 20

Table 4: ANOVAa 20

Table 5: coefficient a 20

Table 6: Excluded variablea 21

List of figures

Figure 1: Berthele, 2008: 272 12

Chapter One Introduction

This chapter provides a general introduction to this paper, which consists of the background of the study, the significance and purpose of the study, and the layout of the thesis.

1.1. Background of the Study

As globalization accelerates, external publicity becomes increasingly significant. External publicity plays a crucial role in the shape of a nation’s image and the enhancement of a nation’s international status. Since the target audience of external publicity is foreigners, translation naturally bulks large in conducting external publicity. However, owing to vast cultural differences, there are some problems in the translation of publicity-oriented materials which may lead to difficulties in comprehension for the audience and thus influence the effect of publicity. One of the problems is the translation of metaphors in publicity-oriented materials in view of rich cultural elements contained in metaphors. As a significant cognitive instrument, metaphors are pervasive in our life. In order to better express ideas and get them effectively understood, people always use metaphors in their speeches or writing. In spite of similarities of human cognition, there exist differences among people’s perception of metaphors in different cultures because metaphors are culture-loaded. For example, since people’s view of dragon differs in English culture and Chinese culture, metaphors with respect to dragon bear considerable differences in the two cultures. In Chinese culture, dragon is in most cases regarded as a symbol of royalty, auspiciousness and success while in English culture, people view dragon as an incarnation of devil. On the basis of differences between English and Chinese metaphors, this thesis makes an attempt to study native English speakers’ reception of the English translation of metaphors in Chinese publicity-oriented materials. Metaphors in the periodical of periodical Confucius Institute will be selected and sorted into three types of structural metaphor, orientional metaphor and ontological metaphor according to the classification method proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). By virtue of methods of cognitive experiment and quantitative analysis, a study is conducted on native speakers’ reception of the translation of metaphors chosen from the periodical.

1.2. Significance and Purpose of the Study

The translator's subjectivity should be based on the acceptability of overseas audiences. However, there are few studies on the relationship between overseas recognition and translation effectiveness, let alone scientific and in-depth descriptive research. Therefore, it is hoped that this research could be helpful for future research on the validity of translation.

Based on Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s classification of metaphors (1980), metaphors in Chinese source texts as well as the corresponding English translation are selected from the periodical of Confucius Institute in my research. By adopting the research framework of cognitive sociolinguistics, this thesis aims to study English native speakers’ reception of English translation of metaphors in the periodical of Confucius Institute by means of analyzing the correlation between the participants’ reception of metaphor translation and their social attribute variables including age, gender, educational level, occupation, the fact whether they have been to China or not, and their Chinese learning situation. In order to examine native English speakers’ reception of metaphor translation, a Gestalt experiment is adopted from Raphael Berthele’s research (2010). Through analyzing the underlying association between native English speakers’ reception of the translation of Chinese metaphors and their social variables, it is hoped that the study is instrumental to the examination of the effectiveness of translation.

1.3. Layout of the Thesis

This thesis is made up of five chapters. Chapter One is the introductory part which includes the research background, the purpose and significance of the study, and the overall organization of the thesis. Chapter Two is concerned with literature review. A general introduction to the publicity-oriented translation and the previous studies of this realm will be provided. In addition, an overview of foreign and domestic studies on metaphor is embraced in this part. Chapter Three deals with the research methodology which is composed of research questions, research materials, participants of the study, instruments as well as data collection part and data analysis part. Chapter Four is the core part of the thesis. The analysis of the reception of English translation of Chinese metaphors among native English speakers and the correlation between the reception and the participants’ social attribute variables will be presented in this section. The last chapter, Chapter Five, provides a conclusion of the study, including a summary of the major findings, limitations of the thesis, and suggestions for the further research.

Chapter Two Literature Review

This chapter is concerned with literature review. Research on publicity-oriented translation and metaphors will be reviewed.

2.1 Publicity-oriented Translation

2.1.1 The Academic History and Research Trends of Related Research in China

Publicity-oriented translation is a special form of translation and an emerging field in translation studies. Translation is an important means of publicity-oriented translation, and the quality of publicity-oriented translation directly influences the effect of publicity-oriented translation. What this thesis studies is among the field of publicity-oriented translation. Li (2001) firstly put forward the point that publicity-oriented translation has its specific audience and special purpose. Therefore, such kind of translation is different from other types of translation in terms of translation principles and translation methods. She discussed the principles and methods of the pretreatment of the publicity-oriented translation materials based on his experience in translating the TV program " China•Tianjin ". It opened the prelude of domestic publicity-oriented translation studies.

After that, Huang (2004) proposed the principle of “three close to” for Chinese publicity-oriented translation on the basis of audiences, namely, close to the practice of China's development, close to foreign audiences’ demand of Chinese information, close to foreign audiences’ thinking patterns and language habits. Chen (2008), based on some fundamental concepts of relevance theory, discussed the "re-creation" of publicity-oriented translation from the perspective of relevance theory in three aspects: 1. Flexible processing of title to achieve optimal relevance; 2. Properly handle the jargons and political terms to achieve the "mutual understanding" of two parties; 3. Translating directly or indirectly to make translator's intention consistent with the reader's expectation. Zhang (2011) and Wei (2011) emphasized that the greatest feature of publicity-oriented translation is that the preset audiences are not native speakers. Due to the differences of cultural background, political attitudes, religious beliefs, thinking patterns and aesthetic view, the reactions of readers at home or abroad are probably different on a same text translated into foreign languages. Therefore, publicity-oriented translation should pay attention to the overseas audiences’ cultural psychology, namely, give full consideration to overseas audiences’ expectation and the cultural psychology, make language style consistent with the audiences’ acceptance for language, and point out different characteristics between the target language and Chinese, as well as overseas audiences’ deconstruction and reconstruction of cultural information.

Si (2013: 298-299) pointed out that the problem currently existing in the publicity-oriented translation is "ambiguity between inside and outside", namely the Chinese texts originally used for internal publicity are translated into the target language intactly. Although Chinese has been translated into target language, the sentence structure, discourse structure, ethnic language style and information transmission still retain the characteristics of Chinese. Yuan (2013) and He (2014) pointed out that the translation in the discourse structure, syntactic structure, rhetoric, writing style and phrasing should be in accord with the habit of overseas audiences, so as to make it clearly for translation to pass information and achieve the purpose of publicity-oriented translation. All in all, the research on the publicity-oriented translation is still not sufficient.

In regard to the effect of publicity-oriented translation, Huang (2004) and Luo (2010) argued that propaganda effect depends largely on the target audiences’ acceptance of propaganda. The effect of publicity-oriented translation will be weakened if the translators just simply imposed inherent idea mode upon others, and ignore international audiences’ selectivity and acceptance of information. So we must delve into the demand of target language’ audience, not only to let them hear the voice from China, and to make them willing to listen to the voice of China and understand China's voice.

Luo (2010) pointed out that China's publicity-oriented translation work could be divided into five major sectors: the Europe and America sector, East Asia and Southeast Asia sector, the Commonwealth of the Independent States sector, the Middle East sector, Africa and South America sector. The Europe and America sector, East Asia and Southeast Asia sector have always been the focus of China's publicity-oriented translation. Under the background of "The Belt and Road ", the CIS sector and Middle East sector have become the new focus of publicity-oriented translation. The publicity work should be conducted on the basis of detailed research on the different sectors’ audiences, and then adopt different communication methods and strategies to carry out targeted propaganda. Chen (2010) emphasized that the overseas audiences not only have different historical tradition, cultural psychology and behavior habits, but also have different ethnicity, gender, age. When we are doing publicity-oriented translation work, we are supposed to finish a large amount of research work, study overseas audiences’ psychological characteristics, respect their life custom, close to their thinking patterns, so as to understand the overseas audiences’ demand for Chinese information

2.1.2 The Academic History and Research Trends of Related Research Abroad

There are few foreign studies of publicity-oriented translation which is very Chinese, but in recent years, there has been a growth of Chinese scholars' achievements published abroad.

Wang (2009) selected the English version of celebrities cultural publicity text in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province as research subject, analyzed the errors in pragmatics, culture, language, text of the text, and pointed out that the translator, audience, propaganda organs should work together to improve the quality of translation under the framework of the Skopos Theory. Ran(2010), Xu and Zhou (2015) took the publicity-oriented translation text of official slogan and website as the case, pointed out the translation errors and their negative impact on the publicity effect, and then put forward the improvement measures. In conclusion, the research on the overseas readers’ cognition of publicity-oriented translation is insufficient.

2.1.3 Summary

The research of publicity-oriented translation is carried out from the perspective of communication and translation, and actually it is discussed from the perspective of internal regulation and external realization. The core issue is how to improve the effectiveness of publicity-oriented translation. The problem to be solved is how to tell the Chinese story in the international language. The "three close to" principle commonly accepted by translators nowadays (Huang, 2004) must be established on the basis of familiarity of the cultural differences. At present this problem still needs a deeper theoretical exploration and empirical studies neither in communication filed or translation field.

Firstly, constructing the research framework of multilingual translation text from the language level, and analyzing in quantity. Secondly, using empirical methods to study the current situation of overseas audiences' interpretation, including the cognitive model and the acceptance situation. Thirdly, based on the empirical research data, further discussion of the principles of the publicity-oriented translation, especially the relationship between the overseas audience's acceptance and the effectiveness of publicity-oriented translation is of necessity.

2.2 Metaphor

2.2.1 Classifications of Metaphors

The classifications of metaphor are various, and the traditional classifications of metaphor refer to various rhetorical figures related to metaphor, such as simile, metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy and so on.

Black (1962) divided metaphors into three kinds, namely: "extinct metaphor" which is unable to save, "dormant metaphor" which still can be activated and "active" metaphor which is the most vigorous according to evolution of diachronic form. In the 1980s, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) proposed that metaphors should be divided into three categories from the perspective of cognitive linguistics: structural metaphor, orientational metaphor and ontological metaphor. Shu (2000) proposed the viewpoint of radical metaphor and derivative metaphor, and also put forward the method to classify metaphors according to the structural characteristics, by which metaphors can be divided into nominal, verbal, adjective, adverb, etc. Lakoff and Johnson's three-category principle has dominated the linguistic field for more than 20 years, and Yang proposed that there is the deviation of the consistency in this classification principle, which confuses the causal relationship between species and genus (2005). However, he only proposed the deviation of the consistency from the perspective of the generative mechanism of metaphor, but did not put forward the feasible classification principle. Dai (2014) improved the three-category principle, and proposed that the two concepts in structural metaphor are similar, namely, the concrete maps the concrete and the abstract maps the abstract. This argument is different from Lakoff's classification standard "structural metaphor use the known to construct the unknown", and also distinguishes the orientation metaphor from the ontological metaphor. The method I chose in this research Lakoff and Johnson's three-category principle.

2.2.2 Translation of Chinese Metaphors

There are few studies on translation of Chinese metaphor at home and abroad. Liang (2007) emphasized Chinese translation should try to keep the original form and meaning of the metaphor in the process of practical translation, but changing the form to retain its meaning is feasible when both of them cannot be retained at the same time. Before him, Hong and Zhang (2005) pointed out that cultural information loaded by all kinds of languages cannot be consistent because each nation’s ecological, physical, social and religious environment cannot be completely the same. Cultural differences directly lead to the difference of human thought patterns and value orientations, so it also becomes the main reason for the differences between the source and target metaphors in translation.

Therefore, how to deal with metaphors with special cultural meanings and translate them properly in another language in translation is one of the major topics in translation studies.

Yang (2009) put forward that metaphor is not only a rhetoric method, but also a way of thinking from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. It exists everywhere in our daily life, and is the result of the human mind evolution. Essentially speaking, it is a process of understanding the world and forming concepts. Translation of Chinese metaphors should obey the principles of maintaining Chinese metaphors’ characteristics, connecting the cultural connotation Chinese and English metaphors, and making up for the lack of culture according to the context. Yuan (2009) put forward the three methods of translating Chinese metaphors: literal translation, seeking target word with equivalent meaning and pure explanatory translation method, and literal translation method was regarded as the first choice. In a word, the three translation methods can be used to translate Chinese metaphors according to the actual situation.

2.2.3 Summary

People’s lives are full of metaphors, so it is evident that metaphor is very important for human beings. Therefore, since Aristotle's time, people have never stopped the study of metaphor, and the derived classification of metaphor is diversified. The traditional theory holds that metaphor is a kind of rhetoric, which means to compare one thing with another. This theory dominated until the time of Johnson and Lakoff. After that metaphor has been promoted to the height of "cognitive mode" to study. It is generally believed in contemporary cognitive science that metaphor is not a rhetorical imagination in nature, but a cognitive activity, which has a potential and profound influence on our understanding of the world. In the eyes of translators, metaphor is an effective means for people to understand the world around. It is tooted in a culture and reflects a culture. So it is a challenge for translators to translate metaphors accurately between cultures. This research would adopted Lakoff and Johnson's three-category principle which divides metaphors into structural metaphors, orientational metaphors and ontological metaphors to study people’s reception of these three types of metaphors from the perspective of the cognitive linguistics.

Chapter Three Research Methodology

Research methodology will be introduced in this chapter. It consists of research questions, research materials, participants of the study, and date collection and analysis.

3.1 Research Questions

This study focuses on native English’s reception of metaphor translation in the English version of the periodical of Confucius Institute, namely, native English speakers’ cognition of metaphor translation. In the study, metaphors are divided into three categories: structural metaphors, orientational metaphors and ontological metaphors according to Lakoff and Johnson’s three-category principle (1980), and there are two research questions:

1. What is participants’ reception of translation of different types of metaphor?
2. What is the correlation between different social attribute variables and the reception of translation of different types of metaphor?

3.2 Research Materials

This research selected the English-Chinese version of the periodical of Confucius Institute published from 2009 to 2017, 52 volumes in total, mainly centering on the three major cultural columns of LIFESTYLE, CULTURE and TRANSCENDING TIMES. Nearly 300 metaphors has been identified the research and all these metaphors were sorted into three types: structural metaphor, orientional metaphor and ontological metaphor according to the classification method proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). Forty metaphors were selected to design a questionnaire including 23 structural metaphors, 14 ontological metaphors and 3 orientational metaphors. In addition, occurrence frequency, Chinese characteristic are also the factors to decide which specific metaphors would be selected such as “Sun Wukong” and “Having meals”.

3.3 Participants

The participants of this study should be native English speakers. Then the researcher must decide how to insure those who are to fill in the questionnaires are qualified ones. The researcher designed two questions in the questionnaires, namely, Is English the language you use at home? Is English the language you use ever since you went to primary school? Those who answered the two questions positively are affirmed to be qualified participants. Finally, thirty participants are confirmed including 12 males and 18 females. As for the social attribute of age, there is 1 person aged 13-17, 27 people aged 18-28 and 2 people aged 29-60. In terms of educational level, 7 of them have high school degrees, 13 of them have bachelor's degrees and 10 people have graduate degrees. In terms of major, 18 people are majoring in Liberal Arts, 10 are majoring in Science, and 2 of them didn’t fill in. As for occupations, 6 have working experience and 24 do not (students are defined as unemployed). In addition, information on the situation of learning Chinese was also included. 12 of them did not learn Chinese, 2 of them studied Chinese for one or two years, and 16 of them studied Chinese for more than two years. Information concerning participants’ having been China reveals that 19 of them have come to China, and 11 of them have never been to China. What’s more, only 7 of the 19 people who have been to China have stayed in China for more than two years. 6 of them stayed in China for 1 to 2 years. The rest of them stayed in China less than 1 year.

3.4 Date Collection and Analysis

Data collection of this research was completed by means of questionnaire. First of all, a questionnaire was designed. The questionnaire was divided into two parts: Background of participants and understanding of Metaphors. The first part includes social attributes of gender, age, education level, major, occupation, length of learning Chinese, having been to China or not and the time length of staying in China. The second part consists of questions revealing the understanding of Metaphors. This part includes 30 questions with 40 metaphors. These 40 metaphors consist of 23 structural metaphors, 14 ontological metaphors and 3 orientational metaphors.

The researcher adopted a more covert method to examine participants’ understanding of metaphor translation, namely, participants were required to choose pictures instead of explicitly stating “positive” or “negative” when reading the translation. The pictures are as follows:

Figure 1. Berthele, 2008: 272

The participants didn’t know the meanings behind these six pictures and they would choose the options according to their intuition and preference.

The rationale behind these pictures can be explained by Gestalt Theory. Gestalt theory is one of the rationalist theories in psychology, emphasizing the integrity of experience and behavior. It is believe that picture constitutes one of the most important and effective media for people to perceive the world and such perception is based on holistic and spontaneous intuition, determined by one’s encyclopedia knowledge, experience and preference (Guy, 2009) while Gestalt psychology is right developed from vision study and maintains that physical forms are closely related to people’s psychological action,. Thus Gestalt, by integrating parts into a new and holistic union reflects people’s general understanding of the world (Koffka, 1999: 79-82). Though such assimilation and integration are based on individual components, they are more than a simple addition of individual. Meanwhile, it is maintained that the world is both physical and psychological ant it is by means of psycho-physical isomorphism that the physical world in integrated with the psychological world via subjective conception (Wertheimer, 2010: 874-875). Though what is to be perceived (the physical world) and what has been perceived (the psychological world) may not be exactly the same, the process of perception is structural.

The six pictures were selected from Raphael Berthele’s research (2010: 272). According to this research, Picture2, 3 and 6 represent positive attitude, namely, the participants who chose these three pictures can accept the translation. On the other hand, Picture1, 4 and 5 represent negative, attitude, namely, the participants who chose these three pictures do not accept the metaphor translation.

After designing the questionnaires, the researcher distributed the questionnaires to overseas students through the website https://www.wjx.cn/ (a website designed to distribute questionnaires online) and asked classmates who studied abroad to help look for participants. In addition, the researcher also tried to ask some people to complete the questionnaires through some social applications like Speaky and Tandem. 30 valid questionnaires were collected in total.

Then the 30 questionnaires were collected and analyzed by the data analysis software SPSS 20. According to the two questions in this research, this research attempts to achieve the following two objectives: Firstly, too understand the native English speakers’ reception of translation of different types of metaphors; secondly, to understand the correlation between different social variables and the recognition of translation of different types of metaphor. Descriptive statistical analysis and Regression analysis are adopted to handle the data with the help of SPSS software. They both belong to parametric test. Descriptive statistical analysis refers to analyzing various characteristics of a set of data in order to describe the characteristics of the sample to be measured and the overall characteristics it represents. Regression analysis is a statistical analysis method to determine the interdependent quantitative relationship between two or more variables. Since SPSS would be used, all the answers are supposed to be assigned. The rules are as follows: 1, 2, 3, 4 correspond to the options A, B, C, and D. Male is 1, and female is 2. As for major, 1 is equal to majoring in Liberal Arts, 2 to majoring in Science. Employed is 1, and unemployed is 2. Those who have been to China is 1, otherwise it’s 2. With regard to the time length of staying in China, less than 1 year is 1; longer than or equal to 1 year and less than 2 years is 2; linger than or equal to 2 years and less than 3 years is 3; more than 3 years is 4. As for part 2 of questionnaire, positive is assigned as 1, while negative as 2.

Chapter Four Result and Discussion

This chapter is the core part of the thesis. The result of the analysis on the reception of translation of metaphors among native English speakers and the correlation between the reception and the participants’ social attribute variables will be introduced. What’s more, the reasons behind these results would also be discussed in this chapter.

4.1 Reception of Translation of Metaphors

4.1.1 Results

Descriptive statistical analysis was conducted to figure out the mean value of reception of each type of metaphors in order to get to know the general cognitive reception of translation of every types of metaphors. That is to say, when the mean value of a kind of metaphors is less than 1.5, the reception of this kind of translation is negative. On the other hand, if the mean value is more than 1.5, the reception of is positive. The farther away from 1.5, the more negative/positive the reception is. The data result shows that the mean values of ontological metaphors, orientational metaphors and structural metaphors are 1.4726, 1.5088 and 1.5029 respectively. It can be found that the participants hold a more negative on ontological metaphors and more positive attitude on orientational metaphors and structural metaphors. It also means the participants are able to understand the orientational metaphors and structural metaphors better but cannot understand ontological metaphors well. Secondly, it can be seen that the standard deviation is basically below 0.5, indicating that the Measures of Dispersion of overall data distribution is relatively low, which means that the data distribution is relatively concentrated. In general, participants have the highest reception of orientational metaphors, followed by structural metaphors, and the reception of ontological metaphors is lowest and negative.

4.1.2 Discussion

According to the result of the above analysis through SPSS 20, we can know the general picture of participants’ cognitive reception on metaphor translation. In general, participants have the highest reception of translation of orientational metaphors, the medium reception of translation of structural metaphors and the lowest reception of that of ontological metaphors. In addition, it can be seen that the standard deviation is mainly below 0.5, which shows that the dispersion degree of the overall data distribution is very low. In other words, the data distribution is quite integrated. This also means that people have a relatively average reception of various kinds of metaphor translation. Conceptual metaphor relies on the generality of people’s metaphorical thinking. This also explains why people have a relatively average reception of metaphor translation. However, conceptual metaphor sometimes has an obvious characteristic of national culture. This is the reason for cognitive dissonance (Lv, 2011). As for why people have the highest reception of translation of orientational metaphors, the medium reception of that of structural metaphors and the lowest reception of that of ontological metaphors translation, the reasons may be as follows: First of all, people’s perceptibility originates from their perception of time and space. In comparison with time, the concept of space is obviously more basic. The abstract concept of time is established based on the concept of space and expressed through the form of orientational metaphor among almost all human languages. As a result, the concept of space is in dominant position in humans’ perceptibility. Orientational metaphor is the most fundamental metaphor in languages and generally exists in our daily usage of language (Wu, 2003). So the participants’ high reception of orientational metaphor is due to their high practice of orientational metaphor. Secondly, orientational metaphor doesn’t equal to using one concept to create another one. This has an essential difference from structural metaphor and ontological metaphor. Orientational metaphor is a series of metaphorical concept created according to orientational orientation like up and down, front and back, inside and outside, deep and shallow in one conceptual system (Wu, 2003). Accordingly, orientational metaphor is quite similar in both English and Chinese. For example, no matter in Chinese culture or English culture, people tend to use “up” or “high” to represent “good” and use “down” or “low” to represent “bad”. This kind of metaphorical concept can be used both to describe some abstract concepts and to show people’s pleasure, anger, sorrow, joy and health condition, etc. Finally, this may also have something to do with the research focusing status of orientational metaphor recently. Currently, scholars’ research on metaphor is mainly focused on conceptual metaphor, conceptual blending theory, orientational metaphor, metonymy and other figures of speech (Lin, 2002). When the research on orientational metaphor increases, people’s knowledge of orientational metaphor will also increase, which may add to the participants’ comprehensibility of the translation of orientational metaphor.

As for ontological metaphor, its lowest reception of translation may be due to the following reasons: Firstly, ontological metaphor helps us understand our related experience through objects and substances. This means that we can treat part of our experiences as a similar and detachable substance. Once we see abstract objects like experience as objects or substances, we can allege, categorize and quantify them and have a rational discussion on them. However, we need to point out that although ontological metaphor can help us understand abstract objects through a specific level, it may also hide some other characteristics of the same object. Take conduit metaphor, one type of ontological metaphor, as an example. It regards language as an object to send communication: Communication is sending. This may easily make people misunderstand the essence of language and the complexity of the meaning of language (Shu, 2001). Secondly, due to the different cultures and geographic positions of China and western countries, the ontological metaphorical systems in the two languages tend to be different frequently. For example, in China, plum blossoms, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum are four common flowers and trees used as vehicles to express emotions. Plum blossoms represent being proud and unafraid of strong power. Orchid represents elegance and the quality which is not in cahoots with the secular. Bamboo symbolizes strong will and the sharp sense of integrity. Chrysanthemum usually refers to a recluse different from common people, natural and unrestrained. In contrast, in English, these four flowers and trees are only the names of four plants, which don’t have abundant cultural connotation as those in Chinese words (Ren, Li, 2010). This is also a kind of cultural default during the process of translating Chinese metaphors into English, which results in a certain degree of influence on people’s reception of the translation of ontological metaphor.

The participants tend to have a positive reception of structural metaphor, which may be linked to the cultural similarity of structural metaphor in different languages. Structural metaphor is used to understand or know one object with the aid of the structure of another object. For example, some structural metaphorical concepts like “Time is money”, “Politics is a play”, “Debate is war” and “Love is a game” exist in many different languages. The same or similar metaphorical concept is used in so many different national cultures that we can find that structural metaphor has similarity under different national or cultural backgrounds (Wang, Wang, 2000). As a result, the participants generally have a positive reception of structural metaphor.

4.2 Correlation between Reception and Social Variables

4.2.1 Results

According to Table 2, we can see the correlation between social variables and the reception of translation of the three types of metaphor. It can be seen that only the reception of ontological metaphors possesses some correlations with occupations and the time length of staying in China in social variables (p lt; 0.05) and there are no significant correlations between the receptions of orientational metaphors and structural metaphors and social variables. In addition, it can be seen that working experience has a negative correlation in a moderate degree with receptions of ontological metaphors and the time length of staying in China has a negative correlation in a weak degree with receptions of ontological metaphors, indicating that the participants with no working experience are able to understand the translation of ontological metaphors better than the participants with working experience and those who stayed in China for a shorter period of time can understand the translation of ontological metaphors better.

Since on the basis of correlation analysis, no correlation between social attribute variables and the reception of orientational metaphors and structural metaphors can be proved, the regression model can only be structured by the reception of ontological metaphors which is regarded as dependent variable and social attribute variables. The following tables show the result of regression analysis.

The result is obtained by means of regression model whose independent variables are the variables in social attributes and whose dependent variable is the reception of ontological metaphors, adopting the method of stepwise regression. It can be seen that only occupation is left in the regress model (plt; 0.05), and other variables are kicked out because p value is disapproved. The Coefficient value of occupation is -0.144, indicating that when occupation increases 1 unit value, the reception of ontological metaphors’ translation would decrease 0.144 unit value. It means only occupation is correlated to the reception of ontological metaphors and other social attribute variables make no influence.

4.2.2 Discussion

Through the correlation analysis and regression analysis, we can find that the general reception of translation of orientational metaphors and that of structural metaphors are not obviously related to social attribute variables. In the research of ontological metaphor, only the social variable of occupation and time length of staying in China are linked to the reception of translation. Occupation has an obviously moderate degree of negative correlation with the general reception of translation of ontological metaphors while time length of staying in China has a relatively low degree of negative correlation with the general reception of translation. The result shows that to some extent, people with no working experience tend to accept ontological metaphor more easily than people with working experience. What’s more, people with a shorter period of time of staying in China will more possibly accept ontological metaphor. Besides, through further analysis, we can find that 1 unit value increase of occupation will result in 0.144 unit value decrease of the general reception of translation of ontological metaphors. This shows that only occupation has an influence on the general reception of translation of ontological metaphors. Participants with no working experience tend to have a higher reception of ontological metaphor translation than the participants with working experience. The changes of other social attributes have no correlation ’’ with the general reception of ontological metaphor translation. As for the particularity of the participants, it can be seen that the respondents of the questionnaires are mainly students. Students are set as jobless, so we can find that students have a relatively high reception of ontological metaphor. This may be related to the education background of the participants. Most of the participants in the research have the experience as international students in China. During this period of time, they were exposed to Chinese culture, which makes up the cultural default to some extent in the reception of metaphorical translation. But what surprises the researcher is the negative correlation in a low degree between the time length of staying in China and the general reception of translation of ontological metaphors. Normally, cognitive reception of metaphorical translation ought to have a positive correlation with the time length of staying in China. However, considering the negative correlation of low degree between them, the small number of questionnaires and individual participants’ relatively greater influence on the result, it can be assumed that this result may need to retest. Apart from this, the researcher believes that the reception of metaphorical translation may also have a positive correlation with the participants’ age since experience can be accumulated as time goes by. The understanding of metaphor lies more on age than language background, family background and emigration time (Johnson, 1991). But it was not shown in this research since the age gap of the participants is basically between 18 and 28.

Chapter Five Conclusion

This is the last chapter of this thesis, providing a conclusion of the study, including a summary of the major findings, and limitations as well as suggestions for further research.

5.1 Major Findings

Metaphor is one of the fundamental cognitive styles of people. Metaphor tends to show some intercultural differences since languages around the world have their unique cultural backgrounds. This essay focuses on studying native English speakers’ reception of metaphor translation in English versions of Confucius Institute.

This research aims at achieving two objectives: First, to understand the native English speakers’ reception of translation of different types of metaphors; second, to understand the correlation between different social variables and the recognition of translation of different types of metaphor. It can be found that since conceptual metaphor mostly relies on the similarity of people’s metaphorical thinking mode, people tend to have a relatively average cognitive reception of various metaphorical translation. However, conceptual metaphor sometimes can show the obvious characteristic of culture, which is also the reason for cognition difference. Orientational metaphor plays a fundamental role in human life and exists inside one conceptual system essentially, so the participants have a positive cognitive level on the reception, which is also the highest level. On the contrary, ontological metaphor may make some essential characteristics of the tenor missed. What’s more, the commonly existing differences in the ontological metaphorical systems of English and Chinese may result in culture default. All these lead to the negative and the lowest cognitive reception of ontological metaphor. The participants have a medium but positive degree of cognitive reception of structural metaphor, which may be related to the cultural similarity of structural metaphor in different languages. The statistics show that occupation has a negative correlation at obviously moderate degree with the general reception of ontological metaphor translation. Through further analysis, it can be seen that among the participants, students who have no working experience have a relatively high reception of translation of ontological metaphors. This may have something to do with the education background of the participants. Most of the participants have the identities as international students in China. During this period of time, they have contact Chinese culture to some extent, which to some extent makes up the cultural default missing in the understanding of metaphor translation. However, due to the relatively small size of questionnaires, the relation between the reception of translation and some other social attributives variables hasn’t obtain enough evidence.

5.2 Limitations and Suggestions

This research takes many efforts and many aspects into consideration. However, due to the manpower and material resources and social environment, the research still has some deficiencies. On the one hand, the number of valid questionnaire is relatively small, which also contributes to the small research base. As a result, this is only a small data research. On the other hand, the respondents of the questionnaire are basically college students. So the identity of the participants lacks variety. They have similar age, education level and occupation. Therefore, this research only provides reference for further study. It is hoped that further research can be conducted and more statistics can be added. What’s more, the comprehensiveness of the participants can be improved to a larger range, including age, occupation and education level to increase validity of the results. Finally, based on the results of empirical study, further discussion can be made concerning translation strategies and theories on publicity-oriented translation.

References

Berthele, R.2010. Investigations into the folk’s mental models of linguistic varieties. Berlin [J], DEU: Walter de Gruyter 265-290.

Black, M. 1962. Models and Metaphors [M]. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Guy, J. 2009. Design and Creativity [M]. New York: Berg Publishers.

Hu, Y. P. 2017. Cultural Connotations of Metaphor and Simile in English and Chinese [J]. SINGAPORE MANAGEMENT amp; SPORTS SCIENCE INST PTE LTD 14: 120-123.

Johnson, J. 1991. Developmental vs language-based factors in metaphor interpretation [J]. Periodical of Educational Psychology 83(4):470-483.

Koffka. K. 1999. Gestalt Psychology [M]. W, Li (Trans). Hangzhou: Zhejiang Education Press 79-82.

Lakoff, G. amp; M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By [M]. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Wertheimer, M. 2010. Isomorphism [A]. In I. Weiner amp; W. Craighead (eds.). Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology[C]. New York: John Wiley amp; Sons.

Zhao, H. H. 2014. Body as Cultural Metaphor in "Moon Lake"[J]. CENTRAL CHINA NORMAL UNIV 36: 80-87.

Chen, F. R. [陈芳容]，2008，外宣翻译“再创造”之关联论解析[J]，温州大学学报（4）：95-100。

Chen, Q. H. [陈清华]，2010，关于海外受众接受心理的外宣策略[J]，江苏社会科学（4）：223-226。

Chen, X. W. [陈小慰]，2007，外宣翻译中“认同”的建立[J]，中国翻译（1）： 60-65。

Chen, X. W. [陈小慰]，2013，对外宣传翻译中的文化自觉与受众意识[J]，中国翻译（2）：95-100。

Dai, W. P. [戴卫平]，2014，词汇隐喻研究 [M] 。中国出版集团。

He, J. S. [贺金山]，2014，外宣翻译中“内外有别”和“以我为准”的统一[J]，现代语文（3）：121-124。

剩余内容已隐藏，请支付后下载全文，论文总字数：61992字