摘 要

隐喻是人类最重要的认知工具之一。隐喻的作用是寻找不同事物、概念和语言表达的相似性，然后建立彼此之间的想象和丰富的联系，以增强语言的表现力和生动性。在金融领域，隐喻得以广泛使用。金融文本中运用了大量的隐喻。经济学家经常使用熟悉的概念来解释经济领域中晦涩的概念或现象，以此帮助读者更好理解抽象的内容。

本文从认知理论出发，以《我们需要直升机撒钱了吗？》为例，浅析金融英语文本中隐喻的翻译方法与技巧。本文分为五个部分：第一部分介绍隐喻的意义、隐喻的研究现状和隐喻在金融领域的重要性。第二部分介绍有关隐喻的基础知识，包括隐喻的词源和组成、隐喻的概念和分类、影响隐喻认知的因素。第三部分介绍金融英语文本中隐喻的特点。第四部分以具体例子分析金融英语文本中的翻译技巧。第五部分总结全文。

关键词：隐喻；认知理论；翻译方法；金融英语

Abstract

Metaphor is one of the most important cognitive tools for human beings. Metaphor is a way of thinking and cognitive processing, not just a language phenomenon. The role of metaphor is to find similarities in irrelevant things, concepts and language expressions and to establish imagination and rich connections so as to enhance the expressiveness and appeal of language. In the financial field, metaphor is widely used. Due to the abstraction and complexity of financial activities, a large number of metaphors are used in financial reports. Economists often use familiar concepts to explain obscure concepts or phenomena in the economic field and help people understand abstract concepts.

This paper aims at introducing the meaning, importance, research status, basic knowledge, classification, and influencing factors of metaphor from the perspective of cognitive theory. Meanwhile, it analyzes the translation methods and techniques of metaphors in financial English texts by taking the translation of Do We Need A Helicopter Drop as an example. This paper is divided into five parts. The first part introduces the meaning of metaphor, the current status of metaphor research and the importance of metaphor in the financial field. The second part introduces the basic knowledge about metaphor, including the etymology and composition of metaphor, the concept and classification of metaphor and factors that affect the cognition of metaphor. The third part introduces the characteristics of metaphors in financial English texts. The fourth part analyzes the translation skills in financial English texts with specific examples. The last part is the conclusion.

Key Words: Metaphor; cognitive theory; translation methods; financial English

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 The Basic Knowledge about Metaphor 2

2.1 The Concept of Metaphor 2

2.2 The Classification of Metaphor in Financial English Texts 2

2.3 Factors Influencing the Comprehension of Metaphorical Meaning 3

3 The Features of Metaphor in Financial English Texts 4

3.1 The Universality of Metaphor 4

3.2 The Particularity of Metaphor 4

4 Translation Methods of Metaphors in Financial English Texts 5

4.1 Literal translation 5

4.2 Free translation 8

4.3 Foreignizing translation 10

5 Conclusion 12

References 14

Acknowledgements 15

Appendix 16

An Analysis of the Translation Methods and Techniques of Metaphors in Financial English Texts

——Take the Translation of Do We Need A Helicopter Drop as an Example

1 Introduction

Metaphor is ubiquitous in everyday life, not only in language, but also in thinking and action. The well-known British rhetorician I. A. Richards (1965) claims that there will appear a metaphor in every three sentences in our daily speech. Newmark (2001) even believes that three quarters of the English language is metaphorical. Lakoff and Johnson point out that nearly 70% of expressions in life are derived from metaphor, which is the fundamental attribute of language. Metaphor was initially studied in rhetorics. By the 1980s, the publication of Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By officially incorporates metaphor research into new areas of cognitive science.

Chinese and foreign scholars have made a lot of research on the definition, classification and translation techniques of metaphor. Hkoff and Johnson (1980) divided conceptual metaphors into orientation metaphors, ontological metaphors and structural metaphors; Indllrkhya (1992) summarized three basic metaphors: conventional metaphors, metaphors based on similarity and metaphors that create similarities ; Zeng Chuzhi (2009) used Goalty's research on the change of metaphorical parameters, and interpreted the similarity between novel metaphor ontology and metaphor from the perspective of cognition and pragmatics to define the novel metaphor. Metaphor is not just a language phenomenon, but also a way of thinking and cognitive processing. The role of metaphor is to find similarities in irrelevant things, concepts and language expressions and to establish imagination and connections so as to enhance the expressiveness and appeal of language. For this reason, a large number of metaphors have been used in financial reports. Economists often use familiar concepts to explain obscure concepts or phenomena in the economic field and help people understand abstract concepts in finance.

Translation of these metaphors poses a great difficulty for the translators. On the one hand, the financial development levels of China and foreign countries are inconsistent, so the understanding and cognition of new things are different. Meanwhile, financial innovations are emerging one after another. As a result, it is difficult to determine the corresponding relationship between the source domain and the target domain. On the other hand, the differences in cultural traditions and ways of thinking between the two languages require translators not only to reserve professional financial knowledge, but also to be familiar with both Chinese and Western cultures in order to adopt appropriate translation methods.

2 The Basic Knowledge about Metaphor

2.1 The Concept of Metaphor

From the etymology of metaphor, “meta” is a Greek word meaning “imitation” or “crossing”, while “phor” is “phorein” meaning “carrying”. Metaphor consists of source domain and target domain. The source domain usually refers to more specific concepts that people are very familiar with, while the target domain represents more abstract concepts that people are relatively unfamiliar with. Its language feature is to map the characteristics of the source domain to the target domain to achieve a new understanding of the target domain. For example, in the sentence of “The tax collectors are killer bees”, it projects the metaphor “killer bees” onto the ontology “tax collectors”, thus people have a more specific and more vivid understanding of the abstract concept of “tax collector”.

Cognitive theory is the latest metaphor theory whose core meaning is that metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon, but also the most basic way of thinking of human beings. Fang Mengzhi (2005) believes that metaphor is essentially a cognitive activity and an important tool and analytical method for human to understand the objective world. Lakoff and Johnson claims that the essence of metaphor is to understand and experience a certain kind of things through another kind of things. In the eyes of Su Dingfang (2000), the charm of metaphor is to destroy an old category and build a new logical world on the ruins of the original category. Metaphor is the way of thinking and cognitive activity, which has provided a path and theoretical basis for our English-Chinese metaphor translation.

2.2 The Classification of Metaphor in Financial English Texts

Metaphorical expressions in financial English are all based on conceptual metaphors and can be divided into three categories: structural metaphors, orientational metaphors, and ontological metaphors. Each metaphor is also systematic in nature.

Structural metaphor is to construct another relatively unfamiliar and abstract concept with a familiar and concrete concept. For example, in the field of “money” and “time”, “money" can be systematically applied to metaphors related to the expression of “time” by the meaning of spending, wasting, saving, giving, and exhausting, such as “You're wasting my time”.

Orientational metaphor is a metaphor concept formed with reference to the spatial orientation, involving up-down, inside-out, front-back, deep-shallow, center-edge and other spatial orientations. Each of them is a system that reflects the positive or negative aspects of financial activities from different perspectives. Applying the concept of orientation to financial concepts is not a subjective imagination of human beings, but comes from human experience and perception and understanding of one’s own movement and spatial environment.

Ontological metaphors mainly refer to entities and material metaphors. It refers to treating experience as an entity or substance, thus we can make a corresponding material description of experience, such as reference, categorization, quantification, classification, etc. Meanwhile, it is also possible to reason about it in this way.

2.3 Factors Influencing the Comprehension of Metaphorical Meaning in Financial English Texts

Lakoff points out that some metaphorical mappings are universal, while others are unique to a particular culture. Meanwhile, the use of language and culture will inevitably produce commonalities and differences.

Zhao Yanfang (1995) points out that the similarity of metaphors is not absolutely objective, but related to people’s experience. Metaphors are based on human experience and are the embodiment of different conceptual systems. People with different cognition tend to use different conceptual systems to figure out the world. Metaphor is derived from cognition and can promote cognition forward at the same time. On the one hand, metaphors are human activities rooted in daily physical experiences, while the physical experiences of different people are the same, so the existence of metaphors is universal. On the other hand, physical experiences cannot be separated from a particular culture and society, thus different cultures may have different metaphorical concepts. For example, some people literally think “helicopter drops” is that helicopters fall from high altitude. While for those engaged in finance, it refers to a kind of monetary policy.

The reason for the difference between English and Chinese metaphors cannot be attributed to the isolated factor, but the result of the interweaving of many factors, including language meaning, subject cognition, pragmatic context and social culture. Only by analyzing the cognitive mechanism of metaphors in financial English texts, can we understand the discourse characteristics of financial texts better.

3 The Features of Metaphor in Financial English Texts

As a very important field in non-literary English, financial English contains many unique language features, such as specialized vocabulary, nouns, acronyms, long sentences and passive sentences. Metaphors used in financial English text also have their own features. To be exact, they possess the characteristics of universality and particularity.

3.1 The Universality of Metaphor in Financial English Texts

Language is metaphorical in nature (Wang 2006: 131), and metaphor is a common phenomenon in language, covering almost every field of daily life. As mentioned above, metaphors are human activities rooted in daily physical experiences. Since the physical experiences of different people are the same, so some metaphors are universal. These metaphors are closely related with people’s daily life. In the material chosen, these metaphors can be classified into five groups:

Vehicle: Helicopter Drops (直升机撒钱)

Animal: Bear market (熊市)；

(3) Disease: Chronic demand deficiency syndrome (长期需求不足综合征); Demand weakness (需求疲软)；

(4) Performance: the only players (独角戏)；

(5) Money: penny stock(廉价股票)

The translation of these metaphors are comparatively easy. Since both English and Chinese choose the same source domain, so we can just use literal translation.

3.2 The Particularity of Metaphor in Financial English Texts

Although some metaphors are universal in both English and Chinese, more metaphors are particular due to the differences in language meaning, subject cognition, pragmatic context and social culture. Moreover, in financial text, some novel metaphors are used to achieve the purpose of attracting the attention of the readers. Novel metaphors are metaphors that appear in communicative situations in order to achieve specific communicative functions. The particularity of metaphors will cause difficulties for translation. For example, “baby bond” , if directly translated, it is “婴儿债券”, which will make people mistakenly believe that it is a bond issued by a certain “baby” institution, such as a “corporate bond” issued by a company, and a “government bond” issued by the government. The original meaning of English is “bond with a face value of less than 1,000 US dollars”, so the metaphorical image of “baby” should be discarded in translation, and be translated into “小额债券”.

4 Translation Methods of Metaphors in Financial English Texts

Metaphor translation is different from ordinary text translation and has its own difficulty. “Metaphor translation is the epitome of translation in all languages, because metaphor translation presents translators with a variety of options: either to convey its meaning, or to reshape its image, or to modify it, or to combine its meaning and image perfectly, which are inseparable from contextual and cultural factors” (Newmark 200:133). The first task of translation is to be loyal to the content of the original text. The second is to make the smoothness and style of the translation correspond to the original text. The third is to be as close as possible to the original text. In the financial field, there is more than one translation method for each metaphor. Different choices need to be made according to different occasions, text environments, and stylistic styles.

In the translation practice of the chosen material Do We Need A Helicopter Drop, three methods and techniques are mainly employed: literal translation, free translation and foreignization.

4.1 Literal translation

Human beings have similar psychological experiences and cognitive ways to the subjective and objective world. Moreover, cultural exchanges between different nationalities and economic interflow have been accelerated. So people in different cultures employ the same or similar conceptual metaphors for the same thing. It is particularly common for Chinese and Western culture in the financial field to use the same conceptual metaphor, which forms the basis for the literal translation of financial metaphors.

Case 1:

ST: Policymakers must prepare for a new “new normal” in which policy becomes more uncomfortable, more unconventional, or both.

TT: 政策制定者必须准备好迎接新一轮“新常态”，在这种新常态下，政策将变得更令人不安、更非传统，或者两者兼有。

Analysis: According to the economic development situation, policy makers in various countries have formulated corresponding economic policies. In this example, “new normal” means that the Chinese economy has entered a new stage different from the rapid growth period in the past, with more emphasis on sustainable development. Translating it into “新常态” is a literal translation method. By directly translating this image, the target language readers can also accept it, achieving the same effect as the source text.

Case 2:

ST: One alternative then is fiscal policy. The OECD argues, persuasively, that coordinated expansion of public investment, combined with appropriate structural reforms, could expand output and even lower the ratio of public debt to gross domestic product.

TT: 接下来，另一种解决办法是财政政策。经合组织令人信服的辩称，协调地扩大公共投资，再加上适当的结构性改革，可能会提高产出、甚至降低公共债务与国内生产总值(GDP)之比。

Analysis: Similarly, the policies adopted by governments when facing the same economic problems are basically the same, so they can be translated with literal translation method. For instance, “fiscal policy” means “财政政策”, “public investment” means “公共投资”, “structural reforms” means “结构性改革”, and “expand output” means “提高产出”.

Case 3:

ST: This is particularly plausible nowadays, because the major governments are able to borrow at zero or even negative real interest rates, long term.

TT: 这种观点眼下看来尤其有道理，因为世界主要国家的政府能够长期以零实际利率甚至负实际利率借入资金。

Analysis: “Negative real interest rate” means that the inflation rate is higher than the bank deposit interest rate. In this case, you will find that your wealth has shrunk as prices have risen if you only store money in the bank. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand the meaning of “negative real interest rate” in conjunction with China's actual situation, so it can be literally translated as “负实际利率”.

Case 4:

ST: This is what the world economy is showing. This is what monetary policy is indicating. Increasingly, this is what asset prices are demonstrating.

TT: 这就是全球经济反映出的状况，也是货币政策反映出的状况。资产价格也越来越明显地反映出这种状况。

Analysis: Monetary policy is the process by which the monetary authority of a country controls the supply of money, often targeting an inflation rate or interest rate to ensure price stability and general trust in the currency. According to life experience and common sense, it can be literally translated as “货币政策”. Asset price refers to the proportion of assets converted into currency. Therefore, it can be literally translated as “资产价格”.