MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG THÁI CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS IN “DẾ MÈN PHIÊU LƯU KÝ” BY TO HOAI AND ITS ENGLISH VERSION TRANSLATED BY DANG THE BINH FIELD: English Linguistics CODE: 8. NGUYEN TAT THANG e BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG THÁI ẨN DỤ Ý NIỆM TRONG TÁC PHẨM “DẾ MÈN PHIÊU LƯU KÝ” CỦA TÔ HOÀI VÀ BẢN DỊCH TIẾNG ANH CỦA DỊCH GIẢ ĐẶNG THẾ BÍNH Ngành: Ngôn Ngữ Anh Mã số: 8. 01 Người hướng dẫn: PGS. NGUYEN TAT THANG e i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby confirm that the thesis entitled CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS IN “DẾ MÈN PHIÊU LƯU KÝ” BY TO HOAI AND ITS ENGLISH VERSION TRANSLATED BY DANG THE BINH is the result of my own study and contains no materials published elsewhere or extracted in the whole, or in part from a research by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma.
No other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgments in the thesis. This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution. Quy Nhon, September, 2020 Nguyễn Thị Hồng Thái e ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to my supervisor, Assoc. Nguyễn Tất Thắng for his acceptance to be my supervisor, and for providing me with insightful and valuable comments.
Thanks to his knowledgeable advice, I was able to narrow down the topic as well as improve the content of my paper. In addition, my sincere appreciation goes to my lecturers at Quy Nhon University who provided me a lot of useful knowledge during the course. I would not be able to carry out this research without their guidance, support, and input. Thirdly, I would like to express my deep gratitude to all those who contributed, directly or indirectly, to this study.
Particularly, I am thankful to my colleagues of Cat Tien secondary school for their support and encouragement. Without them, the study would have been impossible. Last but not least, I want to send our special thanks to my family, especially my parents and my husband whose tremendous care and never- ending love lifted me up whenever things got tough. Without their support, I would not have been able to complete this study.
e iii ABSTRACT This study attempted to investigate the conceptual metaphors in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai and its English versions translated by Dang The Binh. The data for this research were chosen from 188 metaphoric expressions in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu kí”. In order to accomplish the objectives of the study, both qualitative approach and quantitative approach were used to identify conceptual metaphors in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai and their English versions translated by Dang The Binh. Besides that comparative and contrastive analysis, descriptive and inductive techniques were also used.
The finding indicated that the three types of conceptual metaphors used in the work were quite different in distribution. In the Vietnamese version, the ontological metaphors were found appearing 69 times with the highest position, making up 36.7% of the total number of the conceptual metaphors analyzed. Ranking the lowest position was the orientational metaphors, with 30. The other metaphors were structural ones.
In contrast, in “Diary of a Cricket” by Đặng Thế Bính, the ontological metaphors took up the lowest position, with only 31. Both structural metaphors and orientational metaphors occur 26 times, at a rate of 34. Basing on the results, we found out the loss and gain of the conceptual metaphors in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai when they were translated into English by Dang The Binh. Most of the metaphors found in the Vietnamese version were replaced by metaphors or stylistics devices when they were translated into English by Dang The Binh.
The unchanged metaphors only took up 30. Finally, the results helped us suggest some implications for teaching and learning English metaphors. e iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
iv LIST OF TABLES. Aim and objectives. Scope of the study. Significance of the study.
Organization of the study. Metaphors from cognitive Linguistics. Classification of Conceptual Metaphors. Mapping in metaphors.
Theory of Translation. Definition of Translation. Loss and gain in translation. An overview of the Tale De Men Phieu Luu Ky.
Biography of To Hoai. Biography of Dang The Binh. A brief review of “Diary of a Cricket”. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS.
Quantitative analysis of metaphors in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai and “Diary of a Cricket” by Dang The Binh. Qualitative analysis of metaphors in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai. Semantic features of conceptual metaphors in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by Tô Hòai. LIFE IS A JOURNEY.
LIFE IS WAR. TIME IS MONEY. AFFLICTION IS FIRE. EMOTION IS expressed through THE HUMAN BODY PARTS.
CHARACTER IS expressed through THE HUMAN BODY PARTS. STATE is expressed through THE HUMAN BODY PARTS. GROWTH is expressed through THE HUMAN BODY PARTS. PART OF BODY is a PLACE.
BLOOD IS HEAT. ATTITUDE IS COLD. EVENTS AND ACTIONS ARE NUTRIENTS. CHARACTER IS A DISTANCE.
DISTANCE IS TIME. LIVING CONDITION IS expressed through EVENT. EMOTION AND CHARACTER are expressed through ACTIONS. NATURE is expressed through PLANT.
CAPTIVE LIFE IS A FOUL CITY. NATURE IS A PERSON. EMOTION IS A PERSON. STOMACH IS A PERSON.
LANGUAGE IS A PERSON. RANDOM IS A PERSON. THINGS ARE HUMAN BODY PARTS. LESSON IS A AVAILABLE COMMODITY.
CHARACTER IS AN ENTITY. MIND IS AN ENTITY. PART OF BODY IS A CONTAINER. WEAK IS DOWN/ STRONG IS UP.
HAPPY IS UP/ SAD IS DOWN. HIGH STATUS IS UP. NIGHT IS DOWN/ SUN (DAY) IS UP. DEATH IS DOWN.
BAD IS DOWN. ENDURANCE/ BONDAGE IS IN. WINTER IS DOWN/ SPRING IS UP. Lexical features of conceptual metaphors in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by Tô Hòai.
Verbs and Nouns. Adjectives and Nouns. Verbs and Adverbs. Loss and gain in conceptual metaphor in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai and “Diary of a Cricket” by Dang The Binh.
The unchanged metaphors in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai and their English version by Dang The Binh. The unchanged metaphors with the modified metaphorical expressions in English version by Dang The Binh. The replaced metaphor or other stylistic devices in English version by Dang The Binh. The loss of metaphors “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai in English version by Dang The Binh.
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS. Implication for language teaching and learning. Limitations and suggestions for further study. 104 APPENDICES e viii LIST OF TABLES Table Title Page number number Table 2.1 Source and target domains in Ontological metaphors 14 Table 2.2 The metaphoric mapping of LOVE IS A JOURNEY 17 Table 2.3 Peter Newmark’s translation methods (1988:45) 20 Table 4.1 Types of conceptual metaphors 33 Table 4.2 Subtypes of ontological metaphors and their occurrence 34 frequency in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai Table 4.3 Subtypes of orientational metaphors and their occurrence 36 frequency in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai Table 4.4 Subtypes of structural metaphors and their occurrence 38 frequency in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai Table 4.5 The frequency of metaphors in terms of semantics in “Dế 74 Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai Table 4.6 The parts of speech in the metaphor in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu 82 ký” by To Hoai and their English version by Dang The Binh Table 4.7 The unchanged metaphors in Dang The Binh’s version 83 Table 4.8 The unchanged metaphorical expressions in English version 86 by Dang The Binh’s version Table 4.9 The changed metaphors by replacing metaphors with other stylistic devices in English version by Dang The Binh’s 90 version Table The loss of metaphors “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai 93 4.10 in English version by Dang The Binh’s version Table The translated metaphors in English version by Dang The 96 4.11 Binh e 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.
Rationale It is obvious that our life is very much dependant on communication. Of all the means of communication, language is possibly the only one that can satisfy all human needs. Therefore, it plays a crucial role in our life. Every second goes by, there is someone talking, writing, or reading something.
Our lives depend a lot on the quick, elegant, and effective use of language so people often use rhetorical measures, such as personification, simile, metaphor, metonymy, in which metaphors are considered as the most effective way to empower words. Metaphors can make our words come to life; we can use a metaphor to make our subject more relatable to the readers or to make a complex idea easier to understand. They can also be of tremendous help when we want to enhance our writing with imagery. According to Newmark (1988), metaphors are any figurative expression: The transferred sense of a physical word, the personification of an abstraction, the application of a word or collocation to what it does not literally denote.
Metaphors may be 'single' (one-word) or 'extended' (a collocation, an idiom, a sentence, a proverb, an allegory, a complete imaginative text). Today, we can find metaphors represented in our minds more as literal pieces of language other t han figurative, and people see cognitive linguistics as the fastest growing and influential theories on explaining the natural language, the mind, and their relationship with social physical experience. Although they appear lately, people can publish their term into a dictionary majoring in cognitive linguistics. In 1980, Lakoff and Johnson introduce readers their cognitive theory on e 2 metaphor.
They state that “metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action”. From their point of view, we find that metaphors are used as a tool for developing every natural language’s semantics and vocabulary and it is the mean for the humans to describe the world, realize the world’s perception, transform the world, and create the spirit. Metaphors turn up everywhere, especially in the field of literature when they are especially good and hard to miss. Metaphors help the authors make their literary work effective and successful.
Actually, it is difficult to understand abstract ideas, so writers often use metaphors to help them come to readers clearly and help readers gain an accurate insight into their meaning. Culler (1975) claims that with metaphors in literary works, writers are helped convey messages or ideas toward their readers by the poetic function of its uniqueness, one of the features of metaphors. In the Vietnamese literary field, one of the authors who is successful in using metaphors is To Hoai. He took full advantage of the use of metaphors in writing the “Diary of a cricket” and make his work live in the readers’ hearts all over the world.
The book is particularly attractive to not only Vietnamese readers but also foreign readers both adults and children, both the ordinary and researchers. It was translated into fifteen languages and writer Bang Viet said ‘When the book is translated into foreign languages including Russian, German, English, and French, the host countries’ readers are surprised about a story full of humanity.’ According to many foreign writers, the book becomes immortally. With the above-mentioned reasons, I have come to a decision to carry out a study entitled “Conceptual metaphors in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai and its English version translated by Dang The Binh”.