An Analysis of Cultural Metaphors in Translation from a Cognitive Linguistic Perspective

Abstract

Metaphor has been studied for centuries, but traditionally it has been confined to the field of rhetoric, and seen as a rhetorical method. However, with the development of modern society and the advancement of cognitive linguistics, some cognitive linguistics researchers believe that metaphor is no longer just a rhetorical and linguistic phenomenon, but also a mode of thinking. The conceptual system of metaphor contains rich and sufficient cultural information, which makes the cognitive activity of metaphor very complex and the translation of cultural metaphors extremely difficult. Therefore, although many Chinese scholars are keen on the study of metaphor and the translation theories of Western metaphor, few of them have applied them in practice, which has led to the lack of guiding translation principles for metaphor.