A Semiotic Perspective of the Translations of Metaphors in Literary Works with Reproducing the Metaphorical Image Schema
- 1 School of Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Ningxia University, Yinchuan, China
Abstract
Metaphor is more often a way of thinking than a mere rhetorical device. To understand a metaphor requires an exploration into the process during which it is created, thus discovering how certain inter-connections between an object and the sign that it refers to are structured and interpreted. In this case, metaphors are considered to be semiotic in nature. And when it comes to metaphors in literary works, the context that the object and its sign are placed in matters a great deal. Therefore, when translating a metaphor from the original text into the target language, one needs to consider both the image schema of the original metaphor and the context it is in, so as to reproduce the metaphor to the greatest extent in the translated text. This paper selects three literary works of two local writers from Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in China, which, were translated into English via a magazine known as Pathlight , for carrying out a text-based translation research, with a purpose of evaluating if the translation is equivalent when it comes to reproducing the structure as well as meaning of the original metaphor. Some attempts of metaphor translation aiming at reproducing the original metaphorical image schema are made as well, to show that the translator has to fully understand the original metaphor mapping mode first and then engages in the translation practice as a key interpretant in metaphor reproduction.
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