Abstract
Metaphor, which is ubiquitous in children’s literature, has always been a difficult point in understanding and translating. Therefore, the choice of metaphor translation strategies varies much for person to person. This article explores metaphor translation in Wang’s version of <i>Bronze and Sunflower</i>, which aims to provide reference for the future translating Chinese children’s literature through the analysis of metaphor translation strategies in excellent award-winning translation. In order to retain to the greatest extent the unique conceptions, designs, styles, techniques, flavors and cultural implications of the original metaphors, Wang gives priority to metaphor foreignization by which transplantation of images and mapping modes from source domain to target domain can be successfully achieved on the basis of the overlap zone of understanding between the source text (ST) readers and the target text (TT) readers. However, due to the great differences between the two languages and cultures as well as the consideration for child readers, metaphor domestication and partial even complete metaphor omission should be resorted to in order to make the sense and functions of the original metaphors accessible to TT readers. At the same time, it is also worthy of attention that the abandonment of metaphors, caused by the translator’s misunderstanding of some local culture, customs or/and shortage of the relevant knowledge about the connotations of the original metaphors, leads to the loss of unique thinking style, emotional characteristics and aesthetic implication behind the original language. It is concluded that high-quality translation reflects in the choice of the strategies of metaphor translation which depends on the translator’s comprehensive understanding of the source text, translation objectives, the manipulation on the basis of the translator’s own views on children’s literature translation.
Highlights
In order to cater for the growing needs of people all over the world to understand Chinese culture, more and more Chinese literary works have been translated into various foreign languages
Xu Derong and Fan Yawen consider that the English version of Bronze and Sunflower fails to grasp the unique style behind the Chinese folk language such as dialects, slang, idioms and four-character idiomatic phrases so that the distinctive ways of thinking of the local people in the original work are not
Domestication is "a term used by Venuti to describe the translation strategy in which a transparent, fluent style is adopted in order to minimize the strangeness of the foreign text for target language (TL) reader [19]." Metaphor domestication indicates replacing the original metaphor with a similar one in TL or with other rhetorical devices, or keeping only the original sense
Summary
In order to cater for the growing needs of people all over the world to understand Chinese culture, more and more Chinese literary works have been translated into various foreign languages. Xu Derong and Fan Yawen consider that the English version of Bronze and Sunflower fails to grasp the unique style behind the Chinese folk language such as dialects, slang, idioms and four-character idiomatic phrases so that the distinctive ways of thinking of the local people in the original work are not. Zhou Ya and Guo Bin discuss how Wang’s translation achieves transcoding between the source language (SL) and the target language (TL) through de-metaphorization of some basic taste words such as "sour", "sweet" and "bitter", in order to help better understand the differences between Chinese and Western cultures [4]. This article explores the gains and losses of metaphor translation in the English version of Bronze and Sunflower through analysis of the metaphor translation strategies with the aims of enriching the existing research on it as well as of providing reference for the future translating Chinese children’s literature
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