Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Traditional Chinese medicine, as one of the world's treasures of traditional medicine, is also an indispensable part of the essence of Chinese traditional culture and is receiving more and more attention. With the increasingly internationalization of Chinese medicine, Chinese medicine has conquered more and more people all over the world with its amazing basic theories and methods of disease prevention and treatment, as well as its characteristics of environmental protection and hypotoxicity and so on. As a way to carry traditional Chinese medical theories, traditional Chinese medical classics have the academic value, clinical value and cultural value that contemporary medical books cannot replace. Because they are not only classic of Chinese medicine and clinical practice, but also the epitome of Chinese culture, which reflect unique traditional Chinese medical thoughts and are one of the important carriers of Chinese culture. In the meantime, they are also one of the main ways for foreign medical scholars to learn and understand Chinese medicine. Throughout history, traditional Chinese medicine encountered great obstacles in its transmission to the West, with a particular highlight on language and translation. In order to make traditional Chinese medicine better serve the people of all countries in the world, the translation of traditional Chinese medical classics with excellent quality will play a significant role that cannot be ignored.
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1.2 Purpose and Significance
Under the guidance of conceptual metaphor theory, this thesis analyzes the profound phenomena of conceptual metaphors in Nan Jing and compares translations of three English versions of same conceptual metaphors translated by Unschuld, Bob Flaws and Li Zhaoguo respectively, revealing the underlying connotation of conceptual metaphors and different effects brought by comprehending traditional Chinese medicine culture and translation. Also, the analysis of the translation strategies of conceptual metaphors in Nan Jing is to present the original appearance of traditional Chinese medicine culture to readers of different cultures and different languages.
Nan Jing and Huangdi Neijing are both important parts of the excellent Chinese traditional culture. The translation and study of Nan Jing in foreign countries are not only in line with the strategic direction of "going global" of Chinese culture, and are conducive to further promoting traditional Chinese medicine to go to the world and be more scientific, but also benefit to promoting the communication between Eastern and Western cultures, as well as bringing exchanges, references and fusion to the world's medicine.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Researches on Conceptual Metaphor at Home and Abroad
Metaphor is the fundamental attribute and basic way of human cognitive thinking. It fundamentally regulates human practice behavior, spiritual behavior and cultural behavior. All the cultural creation and cultural achievements of human beings are directly or indirectly effected by the metaphor. Therefore, the underlying research of all cultural forms cannot and should not leave the theoretical perspective of metaphor, whether to explore the significance of human culture, or to reveal its essential features. (Zhao Weisen, 2007:17) That is to say, metaphor is everywhere in people’s life. To study the traditional Chinese medicine classic Nan Jing that is filled with a good deal of conceptual metaphorical phenomena, the primary task is to fully understand what is conceptual metaphor and its research status. This chapter is literature review, which mainly retrospects the origin and development of metaphor at home and abroad, from traditional metaphor to contemporary cognitive metaphor, especially focuses on conceptual metaphor.
2.1.1 Researches on Conceptual Metaphor Abroad
The study of traditional metaphor in the West can be traced back to the ancient Greek Aristotelian period of 300 BC. From that time to the 1960s and 1970s can be called rhetorical period, during which the metaphor was only regarded as a kind of figure of speech. In his book Rhetoric and Poetics (1954), he expounds the definition of metaphor and lays the foundation for its future development. He believes that metaphor is a language means of replacing one word with another to express the same meaning, and comparing and connecting two similar things, which is called "Comparative Theory". The theory holds that the two elements of metaphor can be connected by comparing the semantic features of the two words to find that there is a similar relationship between them. That is to say, metaphorical objects and noumenon have similarities. The meaning of metaphor lies in the similarities that are identified in context. His definition of metaphor and its function directly affect the study of metaphor in the western rhetoric circle in the last two thousand years (Su Lan, 2011).
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2.2 Researches on Conceptual Metaphor in TCM Classics at Home and Abroad
As traditional Chinese medicine spreading around the world, foreign scholars mainly focus on the attitude of traditional Chinese medicine, the spread of traditional Chinese medicine culture, the English translation of ancient books of traditional Chinese medicine and so on; however, there is hardly any research on conceptual metaphor in traditional Chinese medicine. Thus, this section mainly talks about the researches on metaphor of traditional Chinese medicine at home.
Huangdi Neijing, as the earliest and highest TCM classic in China, is full of conceptual metaphorical expressions. Liao Zhenggang and Lin Zhengjun (2017) analyze gustation words from perspectives of metaphor and metonymy. They combine the five elements of Yin and Yang in the traditional culture with the theory of cognitive linguistics and study the metaphor and metonymy of the basic gustation words in Huangdi Neijing by combining the study methods of introspection and demonstration. Liu Zhen and Lu Weizhong (2013) use the conceptual metaphor theory of cognitive linguistics and the mapping relationship between the target domain and the source domain to analyze the viscera metaphors and Yin-yang metaphors in Huangdi Neijing. Sun Fenglan (2016) finds out the three types of conceptual metaphorical expressions in two English translations of the Huangdi Neijing, as well as analyzing the causes of different translations. Then she probes into the translation strategies of conceptual metaphors, and provides a reference for the English translation of conceptual metaphors in TCM classics. Zhang Yan (2015) further explores the cognitive metaphorical mechanism hidden behind figurative rhetoric by analyzing metaphorical expressions in Huangdi Neijing: Su Wen. He uses the "four spaces" cognitive metaphorical model of the conceptual integration theory proposed by Western linguists Fauconnier and Turner to analyze the cognitive metaphorical mechanism of the cognitive metaphor. Zhang Xiaomei (2017) analyzes conceptual metaphorical expressions of prescription names and their translation, and then concludes that translator should understand the psychological basis of metaphor from the perspective of cognition rather than linguistic level of prescription names. They should also fully understand metaphors that may be included in prescription names, and reproduce metaphors in the original text as far as possible.
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Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework ...................... 13
3.1 Overview of Conceptual Metaphor .................... 13
3.2 The Classification of Conceptual Metaphor ............... 14
Chapter 4 Conceptual Metaphor Analysis of Nan Jing and their Translations .................. 17
4.1 Conceptual Metaphors in Nan Jing ....................... 17
4.1.1 Structural Metaphors ......................... 17
4.1.2 Orientational Metaphors .................. 18
Chapter 5 Conclusion ..................... 53
5.1 Major Findings ........................... 53
5.2 Limitations and Implications for Further Studies .................... 54
Chapter 4 Conceptual Metaphor Analysis of Nan Jing and their Translations
4.1 Conceptual Metaphors in Nan Jing
According to an uncompleted statistics of this thesis below, there are twenty-eight examples of conceptual metaphors in total in the whole book of Nan Jing and its three English translations. Among them, there are two structural metaphors, three orientational metaphors and twenty-three ontological metaphors.
Among three types of conceptual metaphors, the number of ontological metaphorical expressions is the most. The most probable reason is that Nan Jing is full of the traditional Chinese medicine terminology that usually consists of abstract, invisible concepts on the basis of the traditional Chinese medicine culture. For the sake of spelling over Nan Jing, it is necessary to figure out the conceptual metaphors in the original book.
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Chapter 5 Conclusion
5.1 Major Findings
Compared with tradition study of the translation of Nan Jing, this thesis applies a cognitive approach from the perspective of the conceptual metaphor to analyze the original book and the translations. What's more, the author not only analyzes the conceptual metaphor in one version of English translation of Nan Jing, but also makes comparison among three versions of English translation of Nan Jing.
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