2024 Annual Project of the Center for Chinese Culture Translation and Research, Key Research Base of Social Sciences of Sichuan Province: A Study on the Translation of Tang Dynasty Poems by Scholars Entering Shu from a Cognitive Perspective.
Abstract
The mountain and water images in Tang poems on entering Shu are often used by poets to express their emotions and thoughts, which is a metaphorical carrier. Based on the cognitive metaphor theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), this thesis analyzes the cognitive mechanisms of these landscape metaphors, and compares them with natural images in Western Romantic poetry to identify divergences in cognitive logic and cultural connotation. On this basis, targeted translation strategies are proposed. The study found that the natural images in Tang poems on entering Shu mainly derive from the poets’ physical experiences shaped by the unique geographical environment of Bashu. They used the landscape to express the frustration of the official career, the hardship of life, and the political ambition; the natural images in Western romantic poetry are more inclined to lofty artistic conception, boundless pattern and abstract philosophical thinking, reflecting a way of thinking that separates subject and object. In order to bridge the differences in cross-cultural understanding, this thesis puts forward three translation strategies: conceptual correspondence, image reconstruction and cognitive annotation. While acknowledging that culture-specific metaphors are not fully translatable, translators should strive to achieve cognitive equivalence between the target text and the source text. This study provides theoretical support for the English translation of Tang poems on entering Shu and facilitates the international dissemination of Bashu culture.
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