中国古典诗词中的情感隐喻及其英译研究

On Emotional Metaphors in Classical Chinese Poems and Their English Translations

中国古典诗词往往寄情于物,借物抒情,出现了很多生动的情感隐喻表达。文章主要以愁、相思、爱情为目的域的隐喻表达及其英译为分析对象,研究发现:1)大多情感隐喻表达可归在"情感是液体""情感是植物"和"情感是实体"的概念隐喻之下,其中后者的隐喻机制往往通过反常的搭配实现;2)译者基本上再现了中西具有较强认知通约性的隐喻表达,包括源域或显或隐地投射向目的域的主要特征,从而建构出与原文相似的审美解读空间;3)针对文化个性较强的象征型隐喻表达,译者有时也会对之进行稍加解释;4)译者还会偶尔增添或删除一些隐喻表达,其中增添的审美效果往往更强。

There are many vivid emotional metaphors in Classical Chinese poems given the fact that classical Chinese poems serve to aptly express the authors＇ emotions and feelings by outer objects. This paper investigates those emotional metaphors and their English translations with grief, lovesickness and love as their target domain. It is found that most of them can be listed into three conceptual metaphors, namely, EMOTION IS LIQUID, EMOTION IS PLANT, EMOTION IS OBJECT, and the last one is usually realized by unfamiliar collocation. Those emotional metaphors featuring cognitive commensurability between China and the West are usually reproduced in translation as well as the main features of source domain projected into the target domain so that a similar esthetically interpretive space can be achieved. Symbolized emotional metaphors with great cultural specificity are sometimes briefly ex- plained by the translator. Moreover, some metaphoric expressions might be added or omitted by the translator, and those added emotional metaphors usually have greater esthetic appeal than that of the omitted.