《桃花扇》中概念隐喻的英译研究——以许渊冲、许明译本为例

On English Translation of Conceptual Metaphors in Peach Blooms Painted with Blood—A Case Study of Xu Yuanchong and Xu Ming’s Translation

《桃花扇》中包括多种类型的概念隐喻,体现了作者孔尚任的思维和认知方式。这些隐喻增强了源文本的审美效果,在一定程度上促进了故事情节的发展和人物形象的刻画。本文基于Lakoff和Johnson提出的概念隐喻理论,以许渊冲和许明的英译本为研究对象,将原作中的概念隐喻分为动物隐喻、植物隐喻和器物隐喻。研究发现,译者在英译概念隐喻的认知过程中担当着中间人的角色,需要在源语和目的语两种认知方式中调和转换,基于特定的翻译目的选择处理方式,或重构、或删减、或保留原文的概念隐喻现象,同时还要考虑到译本的质量,站在目的语读者的角度考量。

Peach Blooms Painted with Blood encompasses various types of conceptual metaphors that reflect the author Kong Shangren’s way of thinking and cognitive style. These metaphors enhance the aesthetic effect of the source text and contribute to the development of the storyline and the portrayal of the characters to a certain extent. Based on the conceptual metaphor theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson, this paper takes Xu Yuanchong and Xu Ming’s English translation as the research object, and classifies conceptual metaphors in the source text into animal metaphors, plant metaphors and object metaphors. The results show that the translators serve as an intermediary during the cognitive process of translating conceptual metaphors into English, and they need to reconcile the cognitive styles of the source and target languages. To realize their specific translation purpose, they tend to choose methods such as reconstructing, deleting or preserving conceptual metaphors in the source text. Meanwhile, they also need to take into account the quality of the translation version and put themselves into the target language readers’ shoes.