摘 要

新闻是大众获取最新信息的重要途径，英语新闻的汉译能更好地帮助国内读者第一时间了解国际时事和热点事件，对信息即时有效的传播也有非常重要的作用。英文中的隐喻现象普遍存在于新闻类文本中，因此隐喻的正确理解和准确翻译对英语新闻的汉译至关重要。传统的隐喻研究仅将隐喻视为文学意义上的一种修辞手段，语言学家莱可夫和约翰逊发表著作《我们赖以生存的隐喻》并提出语言中的隐喻现象是隐喻性思维的一种表现形式，它们来源于我们的日常生活和个人体验，且这种体验通过文化来进行传达。基于这一思想和概念隐喻理论，本文以《金融时报》中运用概念隐喻的双语内容为语料进行研究，所选取内容均为《金融时报》于2018年12月至2019年5月发行的最新新闻。通过对英语新闻报道中概念隐喻的翻译方式及其可读性进行分析和研宄，本文证明可读性对于英语新闻概念隐喻的翻译而言是一项重要的因素，且可读性需要从三个方面来进行考虑，包括易理解性和接近性，感染力和传播力，以及深度和思考空间。研究结果表明，针对可读性的不同方面，概念隐喻需要运用不同的翻译方式来进行翻译从而消除文化差异和语言差异，给读者带来最佳的阅读感受。本文旨在丰富对概念隐喻翻译的研究，提高公众对英语新闻翻译的可读性和精确性的意识，同时也可以为国内的英语教学，新闻写作和翻译工作带来一些启示。

关键词：英语新闻，概念隐喻，英语汉译，可读性

Abstract

News is nowadays an important tool for the public to acquire the latest information. The translation of English news helps Chinese readers better know international current affairs and hot issues, thus playing a very important role in the instant and effective transmission of information. Meanwhile, metaphors are common in English news and the exact understanding and translation of metaphors is key to English news translation. Traditionally, metaphor was just regarded as a kind of rhetorical device in the field of literature. But linguists Lakoff and Johnson publish their masterpiece Metaphors We Live By and put forward that metaphor is essentially a thinking pattern, which originates from our individual experience in daily life in the form of culture. Based on this concept and the principle of conceptual metaphor, this paper takes English to Chinese translations of conceptual metaphors in the news from Financial Times as corpus, which belong to the latest news released in Financial Times from December, 2018 to May, 2019. By analyzing and studying different ways of translation of conceptual metaphors in English news and their respective readability, this paper verifies that readability is a significant factor in translations of conceptual metaphor in English news, and it refers to three basic aspects, including understandability and intimacy, appeal and dissemination capability, together with depth and scope for pondering. The final results manifest that conceptual metaphor needs to be translated in different ways for different aspects of the readability so as to bridge the cultural division and eliminate the language barrier for a better reading experience. This paper aims at enriching the previous study of conceptual metaphor, raising the public awareness of accuracy and readability of English news translation, and bringing some enlightenment on ESP (English for Specific Purpose) teaching and learning activities, news writing and translation.

Key Words: English news, conceptual metaphor, E-C translation, readability

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review 3

2.1 Previous studies on metaphor and conceptual metaphor 3

2.2 Previous studies on metaphor translation 4

2.3 Previous studies on metaphor translation in news discourse 6

3 Translation of conceptual metaphors in English news 7

3.1 Faithfulness of conceptual metaphor translation in news 7

3.2 Readability of conceptual metaphor translation in news 8

3.3 Conflicts between readability and faithfulness of conceptual metaphor translation in news 9

4 Readability of conceptual metaphor translation in news from Financial Times 10

4.1 Understandability and intimacy 10

4.2 Appeal and dissemination capability 11

4.3 Depth and scope for pondering 13

5 Conclusion 16

References 18

Acknowledgements 20

A Study on the Readability of E-C Translation of Conceptual Metaphors in News

1 Introduction

In this Information Era, information to people is what water to fish. As an important source of the latest information, news is very pervasive in daily life. Although a large quantity of news are released in English, translation can offer Chinese readers equal access to them. Therefore, translation of English news is conducive to the timely and effective dissemination of information. It is also notable that conceptual metaphor, a kind of rhetorical device, is frequently applied in English news. Hence, handling conceptual metaphor is an indispensable part in the process of news translation.

Since Aristotle’s time, metaphor was traditionally considered as just a rhetorical device that cannot be translated. While in the 1980s, two famous linguists Lakoff and Johnson firstly put forward the concept “conceptual metaphor” in their masterpiece Metaphors We Live By. They point out that the metaphor is in nature a thinking pattern and exists in our daily life in the form of both the language and the thought and the action. Therefore, this device can also be applied not only in the field of literature but also in daily communication and even in many articles of other common genres including news.

Moreover, by dividing metaphor into two cognitive domains: source domain and target domain, and raising the mapping theory, they argue that metaphor can also be translated by means of either reserving the literal meaning or revealing the implicit meaning.

Given the rapid development of the globalization and the continuous progress of the information technology, news increasingly plays an essential role in people’s access to the latest information and hot issues. Therefore, the translation process serves as a bridge between the Chinese readers and English news. However, the majority of the English news, especially those concerning economy and politics, may include technical terminologies and jargon which inevitably pose obstacles for common readers to well understand. Under such a circumstance, journalists tend to choose more familiar and less opaque expressions in metaphorical relations to those abstract conceptions so as to easily get them across to readers. Due to the existence of different cultural backgrounds and means of expression, the translation of metaphors in English news may face many difficulties, one of which is the conflicts between the faithfulness and the readability. The former is one of the principles of translation with the focus on the original material, while the later is a comprehensive and reader-oriented translation standard. Thus, this paper focuses on the readability of the translation of conceptual metaphors and their different effects in different contexts based on the bilingual news taken from Financial Times (2018.12-2019.5).

2 Literature Review

This part mainly presents the previous researches and studies on metaphor, conceptual metaphor in particular. It begins with a brief introduction of the development of metaphor research and some previous studies on conceptual metaphor both at home and at abroad. Then, it expounds on some related studies on conceptual metaphor adopted in the English news.

2.1 Previous studies on metaphor and conceptual metaphor

In western countries, the earliest research on metaphor dates back to Aristotle’s time when the metaphor was only served as a rhetoric device for polishing. This traditional opinion has left a great impression on people’s minds and thus deeply influenced the subsequent metaphor studies and theories. Briefly, he summarized the function of metaphor in a concise way: metaphor is applied to describe one thing by means of another. Besides, Aristotle also pointed out the comparison theory: metaphor can be seen as implicit comparisons between a metaphorical expression and a literal paraphrase based on analogy and resemblances between two objects. For example, the most common expression of metaphor “A is B” is just based on the connection between A and B. Yet, this theory was controversial because many scholars criticized it for taking similarity as the single foundation of metaphor.

In the 1980s, the publication of Metaphors We Live By marked a milestone in the history of metaphor study. They not only creatively put forward the concept “conceptual metaphor” but also shift researchers’ attention to a new direction of metaphor study. Lakoff and Johnson argued in their book that “Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” (Lakoff amp; Johnson, 1980). Besides, they claim that conceptual metaphors can be divided into three types according to different cognitive functions in different contexts: structural metaphors, orientational metaphors and ontological metaphors. Each of these three types embraces different branches. They are flexibly applied in various domains and to describe various phenomena with the intention of giving readers access to their preferred yet complex domains. And in the news discourse, conceptual metaphors can be divided into the following major branches: the UP/DOWN metaphor, the WAR metaphor, the CONTEST metaphor, the HUMAN BEING metaphor, the JOURNEY metaphor, the SPORTS metaphor, the LIQUID metaphor, the CLIMATE metaphor, the CONTAINER metaphor and the BUILDING metaphor. Contrary to previous studies, their researches were more systematic and received universal recognition. Since then, metaphor research has entered a new phase - conceptual metaphor research, and lasts for several decades in the western countries.

Unlike the western countries, the domestic study on metaphor from a cognitive perspective is relatively later. In the 1990s, a Chinese linguist, Zhao Yanfang published an article about cognitive metaphor for the first time. And it was thanks to his introduction of the book Metaphors We Live By to China in 1995 that many scholars began to notice this “pristine field” and get engaged in doing concerning researches. The relevant studies have flourished in recent decades and can be mainly divided into two parts: the introduction of conceptual metaphor theory and the empirical studies on specific discourses.