The fight metaphor in translation: From patriotism to pragmatism

IF 16.4 1区化学 Q1 CHEMISTRY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY

Accounts of Chemical Research Pub Date : 2023-10-10 DOI:10.1075/target.21151.wu

Yang Wu

{"title":"The fight metaphor in translation: From patriotism to pragmatism","authors":"Yang Wu","doi":"10.1075/target.21151.wu","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The fight metaphors discussed in this article are linguistic expressions of physical conflict, a revolutionary legacy that still lingers in contemporary Chinese political discourse. This article takes a critical cognitive-linguistic approach to fight metaphors in translation, analysing a dataset comprising the Chinese governmental and Communist Party of China’s congressional reports and their official English-language translations from 2004 to 2020. The discussion highlights conceptual metaphor’s representational role and its ideological potential in discourse, and operationalises the English-based metaphor identification procedure ( Steen et al. 2010 ) for Mandarin texts. Drawing on corpus-based evidence, the article argues that fight metaphors in the source texts (STs) legitimise and consolidate Beijing’s dominance of domestic power by generating positive representations and reproducing patriotic ideology. The translations of those metaphors transform Beijing’s image, assertive in the STs, into a non-aggressive one for the international readership. The target texts (TTs) also reproduce favourable representations from the STs to justify China’s unique political system and to satisfy a pragmatic need – that of constructing positive images for the Chinese authority and China internationally.","PeriodicalId":1,"journal":{"name":"Accounts of Chemical Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":16.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Accounts of Chemical Research","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1075/target.21151.wu","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CHEMISTRY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract The fight metaphors discussed in this article are linguistic expressions of physical conflict, a revolutionary legacy that still lingers in contemporary Chinese political discourse. This article takes a critical cognitive-linguistic approach to fight metaphors in translation, analysing a dataset comprising the Chinese governmental and Communist Party of China’s congressional reports and their official English-language translations from 2004 to 2020. The discussion highlights conceptual metaphor’s representational role and its ideological potential in discourse, and operationalises the English-based metaphor identification procedure ( Steen et al. 2010 ) for Mandarin texts. Drawing on corpus-based evidence, the article argues that fight metaphors in the source texts (STs) legitimise and consolidate Beijing’s dominance of domestic power by generating positive representations and reproducing patriotic ideology. The translations of those metaphors transform Beijing’s image, assertive in the STs, into a non-aggressive one for the international readership. The target texts (TTs) also reproduce favourable representations from the STs to justify China’s unique political system and to satisfy a pragmatic need – that of constructing positive images for the Chinese authority and China internationally.

查看原文本刊更多论文

翻译中的战斗隐喻:从爱国主义到实用主义

摘要本文讨论的打架隐喻是肢体冲突的语言表达，肢体冲突是当代中国政治话语中仍然存在的革命遗产。本文采用一种批判性的认知语言学方法来对抗翻译中的隐喻，分析了一个包含2004年至2020年中国政府和中国共产党国会报告及其官方英语翻译的数据集。讨论强调了概念隐喻的表征作用及其在话语中的意识形态潜力，并将基于英语的隐喻识别程序(Steen et al. 2010)应用于普通话文本。根据基于语料库的证据，本文认为，源文本(STs)中的战斗隐喻通过产生积极的表征和再现爱国主义意识形态，使北京对国内权力的主导地位合法化并得到巩固。这些隐喻的翻译将北京在STs中的自信形象转变为国际读者眼中的非侵略性形象。目标文本(TTs)也复制STs的有利陈述，以证明中国独特的政治制度，并满足实用主义的需要-为中国当局和中国在国际上建立积极的形象。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Accounts of Chemical Research 化学-化学综合

CiteScore

31.40

自引率

1.10%

发文量

312

审稿时长

2 months

期刊介绍： Accounts of Chemical Research presents short, concise and critical articles offering easy-to-read overviews of basic research and applications in all areas of chemistry and biochemistry. These short reviews focus on research from the author’s own laboratory and are designed to teach the reader about a research project. In addition, Accounts of Chemical Research publishes commentaries that give an informed opinion on a current research problem. Special Issues online are devoted to a single topic of unusual activity and significance. Accounts of Chemical Research replaces the traditional article abstract with an article "Conspectus." These entries synopsize the research affording the reader a closer look at the content and significance of an article. Through this provision of a more detailed description of the article contents, the Conspectus enhances the article's discoverability by search engines and the exposure for the research.