Chapter Two: Literature Review 

2。1 Definition of Metaphor

In English, the term metaphor can be used in both a broad and narrow sense。 In the narrow sense, it equals the conception of An Yu in Chinese。 It is a figure of speech which makes a comparison between different elements by using verbs such as to be, to turn into, to become, to be called, rather than the simile markers。 In order to avoid confusion, in this paper the term metaphor will be used in its narrow meaning。

2。2 Translation of metaphor文献综述

Contrary to the prosperous scene in theory of metaphor, the translation of metaphor in different languages has been neglected for a long time。 This situation lasted to 1976 and broke by “Can metaphor be translated?” (Snell-Hornby, 1995) Then, Broeck published The Limits Of Translatability in 1981。 The translation of metaphor gradually attracted the attention of translation theorists and translators。 The focus of metaphor is mainly reflected in two aspects: On the one hand, the translatability of metaphor is an even more noticeable focus among the translators; On the other hand, how to translate if the metaphor can be translated is the biggest question。 Kloepfer thinks metaphors can be translated。 He believes that there is not only a "harmonious" metaphorical field between different European languages", but also the whole human being also share the concrete metaphorical field。 In Dagut’s view(1976), the translatability of any given source language metaphor depends on (1) semantic associations exploited by it and the particular cultural experiences, and (2) the degree of overlap in each particular case limits the extent to which these can, or cannot, be reproduced non-anomalously in the target language。 

Raymond van den Broeck (1981) proposes that translatability keeps an inverse proportion with the quantity of information manifested by the metaphor and the degree to which this information is structured in a text。 The less information and the simpler structure of a metaphor, the more translatable this metaphor will be, and vice versa。 Mary Snell-Hornby (1995) adopts and extends van den Broeck’s model, asserting that the translatability of a metaphor cannot be decided by “a set of abstract rules”, but depends on “the structure and function of the metaphor within the text concerned”。

The major difficulty of rendering literature is to deal with its form that has deep roots in a specific language and culture。 Dagut (1987) states that literary metaphors are different from metaphors in other discourses since they are rule-breaking and create an aesthetic effect on their readers。 If the literary text is considered as a self-enclosed unit, the translation of metaphors poses a challenge which requires the translator to reproduce an equally coherent and evocative system of images in the target language, aiming to generate the same aesthetic effect that can be sensed by the source language readers to the target readers。