Abstract
Mo Yan’s novel Red Sorghum is well known for its creative and initiative usage of metaphors. When it is translated into English, the translator has to evaluate the cultural differences between Chinese and English. The current study takes the translation of metaphors in Red Sorghum as an example to illustrate how cultural elements influence translation. The representative examples selected hereby were analyzed on the basis of the Relevance Theory and at the same time different cultural elements were taken into account to provide solid evidence. This essay proposes that translations of metaphors in Red Sorghum can be divided into four types: from metaphor to simile, from metaphor to metaphor with the tenor and vehicle unchanged, replacing the vehicle, deleting the vehicle. In order to facilitate target readers’s inferential process and help them establish the optimal relevance, the translator has to deliberate the disparities of the cultures in the source language and target language and then demonstrate the appropriate ostensive stimuli. No matter what measures the translator takes, it can not be sepearated from the corresponding cultural elements.
Highlights
1.1 Definition of Metaphor and its FunctionsA metahpor is a figure of speech that refers to one thing by mentioning another thing with the purpose to achieve rhetorical effects
The translation of metaphors is a tough responsibility for the translator, because the process involves a lot of cultural elements
In order to facilitate target readers’s inferential process, the translator has to deliberate the cultural disparities in the source language and target language and demonstrate the appropriate ostensive stimuli
Summary
A metahpor is a figure of speech that refers to one thing by mentioning another thing with the purpose to achieve rhetorical effects. The current case study focuses on the translation of metaphors in Red Sorghum from the rhetoric and cognitive viewpoints, for metaphor, as a promoter of language development, influences only the internal system of a language, regadless of those cultural elements outside of the linguistic system. Metaphors play an important role to help human beings to view the world This role implies that the usage of metaphors involves various cultural elements. No matter what nationality they belong to, take metaphors as a tool to feel and understand the world. Mo Yan’s novel Red Sorghum is well known for its creative and initiative usage of metaphors When it is translated into English, the translator, American sinologist Howard Goldblatt, has to evaluate the cultural disparities between Chinese and English.
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