Translation of Metaphor from the Perspective of Cognitive Linguistics

Abstract

Metaphor not only contains the characteristic connotation of the language itself, but also the words that cannot be expressed in a straightforward manner. The traditional metaphor view holds that metaphor is only used to beautify and modify language, but cognitive linguistics regards metaphor as a mapping of thinking, mainly through people’s existing experience and knowledge to understand new things, that is to say, from a known concept domain to understand another unknown concept domain. Therefore, metaphor can be regarded as a medium for establishing connection between the source domain and the target domain, and it also plays an important role in our study and daily life. This paper analyzes the translation of metaphor from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. Through the translation of various metaphors, we find that in the process of metaphor translation, we need to distinguish the source schema from the image schema metaphor; also it is necessary to distinguish the type of text; as well as the cultural meaning behind the text and the value to be conveyed. The translation strategy of direct translation or free translation, naturalization or alienation is used to translate the target domain.