Abstract:The Book of Poetry is the most ancient collection of Chinese realist poems. It was introduced to the west in the 17th century. Since then it has had great influence on the western literary field and it has become the inspiration spring of some poets. Many poems in The Book of Poetry employ metaphors to describe love, which vividly reflect the history, customs, psychological characteristics, etc. How to handle love metaphors translation properly has drawn the attention of the translators due to the cultural gap between Chinese and English.

Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory indicates that people’s language communication is a reasoning process, and the understanding of utterance is a cognitive activity. The process of people’s cognition is often inclined to get the greatest contextual effect with minimum of the reasoning efforts, that is, to achieve the communication optimal relevance. Relevance Theory provides a new viewpoint for the understanding and translation of love metaphors in The Book of Poetry. Because metaphor has a lot of context assumptions and involves factors of related national culture and the cognitive ability, etc., the translators should find the optimal relevance, which means to represent in the target language the connotations of the original metaphor with the help of reasoning a serious of vague and recessive concepts of the source language. 

Based on Relevance Theory and a fully interpretation of love metaphors in The Book of Poetry, this thesis concludes translation methods with analysis of the translated versions by Mr. Wang Rongpei and his cooperators. The methods are preserving the original metaphor, substituting by simile, addition, and replacing.

Keywords:  Relevance Theory  The Book of Poetry  Love metaphor  translation

Contents

Abstract

摘要

Chapter One Introduction-1

1.1 The Significance and Purpose of the Study-1

1.2 The Structure of the Thesis-1

Chapter Two Relevance Theory and Translation-3

2.1 Relevance Theory and Its Development-3

2.2 The Application of Relevance Theory to Translation-3

Chapter Three Love Metaphors in The Book of Poetry-5

3.1 The Book of Poetry-5

3.2 Metaphor-5

3.3 Love Metaphors in The Book of Poetry-5

3.3.1 Plant as Vehicle-5

3.3. 2 Animal as Vehicle-6

3.3.3 Nature Object as Vehicle-7

3.3.4 Journey as Vehicle-7

Chapter Four C-E Translation Methods of Love Metaphor in The Book of Poetry-8

4.1Preserving the Original Metaphor-8

4.2 Substituting by Simile-9

4.3 Adding-9

4.4 Replacing-10

Chapter Five Conclusion-12

References-13