Conceptual metaphors in dế mèn phiêu lưu ký by to hoai and its english version translated by dang the binh

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. 22. 02. 01

Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. NGUYEN TAT THANG


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 TƠ HỒI VÀ BẢN DỊCH
TIẾNG ANH CỦA DỊCH GIẢ ĐẶNG THẾ BÍNH
••

Ngành: Ngơn Ngữ Anh
Mã số: 8. 22. 02. 01

Người hướng dẫn: PGS. TS. NGUYEN TAT THANG

3

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


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to my
supervisor, Assoc. Prof. 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 neverending love lifted me up whenever things got tough. Without their support, I
would not have been able to complete this study.


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 30.9%. 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
31.6%. Both structural metaphors and orientational metaphors occur 26 times,
at a rate of 34.2%. 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 30.3%. Finally, the results helped us suggest some implications for
teaching and learning English metaphors

TABLE OF CONTENTS


4.2.1.6.
4.2.1.8.

APPENDICES

GROWTH is expressed through THE HUMAN BODY


LIST OF TABLES
Table

Title

number

Page
numbe
r
14

Table
2.1
Table
2.2

Table
2.3
Table
4.1
Table
4.2

Source and target domains in Ontological metaphors

Table
4.3

Subtypes of orientational metaphors and their

Table
4.4

Hoai
Subtypes of structural metaphors and their occurrence

Table
4.5

The frequency of metaphors in terms of semantics in

Table
4.6

The parts of speech in the metaphor in “Dế Mèn phiêu
lưu ký” by To Hoai and their English version by Dang

82

Table
4.7
Table
4.8

The
The Binh
unchanged metaphors in Dang The Binh's version

83

Table
4.9

The metaphoric mapping of LOVE IS A JOURNEY

17

Peter Newmark's translation methods (1988:45)
Types of conceptual metaphors

20
33

Subtypes of ontological metaphors and their occurrence
frequency in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai
occurrence frequency in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To

frequency in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai
“Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai

The unchanged metaphorical expressions in English
version by Dang The Binh's version
The changed metaphors by replacing metaphors with
other stylistic devices in English version by Dang The

34
36
38
74

86

90

Binh's version
Table

The loss of metaphors “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To

4.10

Hoai in English version by Dang The Binh's version

93

Table

The translated metaphors in English version by Dang
The

96

4.11

Binh


8

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1.

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 than 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
metaphor. They state that “metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in


9

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”. This study
attempts to investigate what types of conceptual metaphors are used in “Dế
Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai and its English version translated by Dang The


10

Binh and find out the loss and gain of the conceptual metaphors in “Dế Mèn
phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai when they are translated into English by Dang The
Binh.
1.2.

Aim and objectives

1.2.1.

Aim

This study was aimed to examine how the conceptual metaphors in “Dế
Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai were translated into English by Dang The Binh

in terms of loss and gain.
1.2.2.

Objectives

In order to achieve the aims stated above, I tried to focus on the
following objectives.
First of all, I identified and classified the conceptual metaphorical
expressions used in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai and its English version
translated by Dang The Binh
Second, I tried to explore the loss and gain when these conceptual
metaphorical expressions are translated into English by Dang The Binh.
1.3.

Research questions

To achieve the aim and the objectives of the study, the research is trying
to answer the following two questions:
1. What types of conceptual metaphors are used in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu
ký” by To Hoai and in its English version translated by Dang The Binh?
2. What are the loss and gain of the conceptual metaphors in “Dế Mèn
phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai when they are translated into English by Dang The
Binh?
1.4.

Scope of the study

In this study, I only concentrated on analyzing the three types of
conceptual metaphors: ontological metaphors, orientational metaphors, and

11

structural metaphors. Then I also tried to find out the similarities and the
differences of the conceptual metaphors of this literary work in two languages.
Due to the time limit, this research is only carried out on “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu
ký” by To Hoai and its English version translated by Dang The Binh.
1.5.

Significance of the study

This thesis is a contribution to understanding more about metaphors.
In terms of theory, the finding of the study will hopefully provide
knowledge about how the conceptual metaphors in “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by
To Hoai were translated into English by Dang The Binh in terms of loss and
gain.
Practically, the results of the study suggest some implications for
teachers, students, and especially those studying conceptual metaphor
translation. Specialfically, it helps teachers figure out how to identify
conceptual metaphorical expressions and classify their categories. Moreover,
They can train students better in translating conceptual metaphorical
expressions into English.
1.6.

Organization of the study

There are five main chapters in this study
Chapter one, Introduction, introduces the study by giving its rationale,
aims, objective, research questions, significance, scope, and organization.
Chapter two, Literature review and theoretical background. This

chapter will review previous studies relating to the research. Moreover, it will
also provide basic knowledge of metaphors and conceptual metaphors that the
subject involves.
Chapter three, Methodology, describes the research methods,
procedures, data collection, and data analysis...
Chapter four, Findings and discussion, analyzes, describes, and


12

discusses the results.

Chapter
Conclusions
and
Implications,
summarize
the and
main
findingsfive,
learning
of the
English,
study,
and gives
provides
suggestions
implications
for further
for teaching

research.


CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter presents a brief review of previous studies related to the
topic, and then the chapter concentrates on theoretical background that forms the
frame of the study including cognitive linguistics, the theory of conceptual
metaphors, and its three types. Finally, an overview of the tale “Dế Mèn phiêu
luu ký” is also mentioned.
2.1.

Theoretical Background

In this chapter, I will give a brief review of the theoretical background for
the thesis in two main parts; traditional metaphors and conceptual metaphors so
that readers will be able to differentiate them clearly and understand more about
their relationship. Besides that, an overview of the tale “Dế Mèn phiêu lưu kí”
as well as the theory of translation will be also mentioned.
2.1.1.

Introduction

For a long time, metaphors have played important roles in our lives and
attracted the attention of many foreign and Vietnamese linguistic researchers
with a lot of different linguistic perspectives such as semantics, syntactic,
pragmatics, and translation.
Aristotle is known as the first researcher who has had a great impact on
the history of Western rhetoric and poetics. His two successful works, Rhetoric
and Poetics help people initially understand metaphor in detail. In terms of

poetics, he clarified metaphor as “the application of an alien name by
transference either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from
species to species, or by analogy, that is proportion” (Aristotle, 2006).
According to his point of view, metaphor is considered as a kind of expressive
way, replacing one word with another and his explanations are the origin of the
comparison theory.


In the traditional view, Snell- Hornby (1988) confirms that whether a
metaphor is “translatable”, it must depend on the structure and function of the
metaphor within the text concerned without being decided by a set of abstract
rules. More typically, in “A textbook of translation”, Peter New mark explained
that “By metaphor, I mean any figurative expression: the transferred sense of a
physical word (naitre as “to originate”, its most common meaning); the
personification of an abstraction (“modesty forbids me”- entoute modestie Je ne
peux pas); the application of a word or collocation to what it does not literally
denote, i.e., to describe one thing in terms of another. All polysemous words (a
“heavy” heart) and most English phrasal verbs (“put off”, dissuader, troubler,
etc.) are potentially metaphorical.”
Besides that, in 1980, the two famous linguistic researchers, Lakoff and
Johnson help us have a new perspective on metaphors, whereby metaphors not
only make our thoughts more vivid and interesting but also structure our
awareness and understanding. With the work “Metaphors We Live By” (1980)
they open a new investigation on metaphor study in which the idea of
“conceptual metaphor” was first known. Lakoff and Johnson state that
“Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and
action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and
act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980:3).
Their results of the study are very significant because they indicate that
metaphor becomes a cognitive tool and popular with everyday human

communication, understanding, and reasoning.
After publishing “Metaphors We Live By” in 1980, many scholars and
researchers focus on studying this field. Ahrens in Politics, Gender, and
Conceptual Metaphors (2009) researches linguistic data from five countries to
find out the differences and the similarities between conceptual metaphors used


by women with political and those of men. And she comes up with a conclusion
that male and female politicians use femininity and masculinity or not, it
depends on their purposes and metaphors seem to be used very often when they
want to persuade people of their plans and appeal to constituents for support.
In his book entitled Ngôn ngữ học tri nhận - Từ lý thuyết đại cương đến
thực tiễn Tiếng Việt, Lý Toàn Thắng (2005) helps readers have a whole general
view of cognitive linguistics. In this book, he mentions cognitive maps,
language model, and explains how the world's spatial models are. However, this
book only focuses on some key conceptions of cognitive linguistics without its
aspect - conceptual metaphor.
2.1.2.

Traditional metaphors

It is true that metaphors are very necessary for daily discourse due to their
powerful abilities. Therefore, it is considered as a “linguistic phenomenon” in
our daily language. During the last decades, metaphors have been given many
definitions and concepts by researchers, linguists, and scholars. Max Black
(1962) insists that a metaphor is not an isolated word. With the view that
metaphors are not decorative substitutes or implicit comparisons, Black proves
an interaction theory, stressing the conceptual role of metaphors. Metaphors'
cognitive contribution to language and thought results from an interaction of
“the principle subject” and “the subsidiary subject”. Moreover, in Poetics

(2006), Aristotle says that “Metaphors are the application to something of a
name belonging to something else, either from the genus to the species, or from
the species to the genus, or from a species to another species, or according to
analogy.” He means that metaphors are comparisons without the words, “like”
or “as”. The metaphor “She is a bee”, for example, would be an ellipsis from the
comparison “She is like a bee” He also confirms that a metaphor has two main
parts named the vehicle and the tenor. The tenor is the subject to which the


metaphors are applied. The vehicle is the metaphorical term through which the
tenor is applied. These two parts come together to reach a point of similarity is
known as a ground. Besides, Cicero's discovery in metaphors makes a big
impression on linguists and researchers who are extremely interested in them.
Cicero (1994) believes that metaphors make the language more lively and
diversified: “The view that metaphor was a decorative use of language prevailed
first among the proponents of metaphor's virtues and later among its detractors.”
It means that metaphors enrich language by providing its speakers with more
dignified and delightful ways of expressing themselves. In this traditional
approach, metaphors are regarded as a stylistic device, mostly used in poems
and songs. Lakoff (1994) reveals that “the word metaphor was defined as a
novel or poetic linguistic expression where one or more words for a concept is
used outside of its normal conventional meaning to express a similar concept.”
Lakoff and Johnson (1980) summarize metaphors in the pre- cognitive periods:
Metaphors for most people is a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical
flourish - a matter of extraordinary than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphors are
typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than
thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well
without metaphors.

2.1.3.

Metaphors from cognitive Linguistics

2.1.3.1. Cognitive Linguistics
Cognitive Linguistics is a school of modern linguistics that rose in the
late 1970s and the early 1980s. George Lakoff and Ronald Langacker are
considered as its founders. According to Wikipedia, in 1975, Lakoff coins the
term “cognitive grammar” by publishing the paper "Cognitive Grammar: Some
Preliminary Speculations". The term "cognitive linguistics" is also named by
him in 1987 in his book "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things", one of his most
famous writings. The two remarkable works were written by Lakoff and


Langacker in 1987 state the fact that cognitive linguistics had become mature. In
1990, people published the magazine Cognitive Linguistics and founded the
International Cognitive Linguistics Association.
All of these activities contribute to marking the birth and the development
of cognitive linguistic. Taylor (1997) confirms that language research is
cognitive research and language is considered as a phenomenon of cognition or
a cognitive activity and is observed and studied from the scientific study of
human cognition by cognitive linguistics.
According to Ungerer and Schmid (2001), three main approaches
represent cognitive linguistics are the experiential view, the prominence view
and the attentional view of the language, whereas the experiential view insists
on the important experience of human that plays an important role in the
Conceptual Metaphor Theory from the cognitive point of view.
In Viet Nam, Ly Toan Thang (2005) defines cognitive linguistics as a new
school of modern linguistics. Cognitive linguistics studies language by basing
on the basis of not only experience and human perception of the objective world
but also the way people perceive and conceptualize things and situations of that

objective world.
2.1.3.2. Conceptual metaphors
Lakoff and Johnson (1980) change traditional views on metaphor by
presenting a new approach to help people understand and categorize metaphor
with their theory of conceptual metaphor. Through their theory, we are able to
realize that metaphor is in nature, not simply in language but in thought and
action.
In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor is described as a cognitive
device whereby one concept is partially mapped onto another. It refers to
understanding and experiencing one type of abstract entity in terms of another


type of concrete entity (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003).
The two domains that take part in a conceptual metaphor are known as
source domain (SD) and the target domain (TD). The SD is the conceptual
domain from that we tend to draw metaphorical expressions to grasp another
conceptual domain while we tend to use the target domain (TD) to call the
means by which the conceptual domain is known.
Kovecses (2002) gives his definition to metaphorical expressions in
which he states that metaphorical expressions are words or other linguistic
expressions that originate from the language of the terminology of the more
concrete conceptual domain. To explain this, let's see the metaphor TIME IS
MONEY
I don't have the time to give you
I've invested a lot of time in her
Do you have much time left?
You're running out of time
(Lakoff & Johnson, 1980:7)
From the instance above, time is the target domain and an abstract
conceptual reality that is understood in terms of physical reality - money as the

source domain. In other words, the way people talk about time in English is
similar to the way they talk about money so time is understood and experienced
as money - a valuable and limited commodity which can be given, invested, had
left and run out of
According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980) metaphors are pervasive in
everyday life, not only a matter of language but also a matter of thought and
action. They play an important role in daily language and are cognitive in
nature, verbalized in different linguistic expressions.
In conclusion, conceptual metaphors can aid our thinking in two ways; as


explanatory or constitutive metaphors. Explanatory metaphors are used to make
it easier for the layman to understand complex scientific, political, and social
issues. Constitutive metaphors are an integral part of theorizing about these
problems and popular theories about natural phenomena tend to rely on
constitutive metaphors.
This study is carried out basing on the conceptual metaphor's framework
of Lakoff and Johnson (1980), which is to understand and experience one thing
in terms of another thing through the mapping based on the similarities of the
experience.
2.1.3.3.

Classification of Conceptual Metaphors

In the work Metaphor We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) classify
conceptual metaphors into three categories, namely structural metaphors,
ontological metaphors, and orientational metaphors.
• Structural Metaphors

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) give the definition of structural metaphor in

which it is defined as “a case where one concept is metaphorically structured in
terms of another”. It means that structural metaphor allows us to understand the
target domain via means of source domain structured or by means of conceptual
mappings. Moreover, it is considered as a metaphorical system that abstract
concepts are interpreted in terms of concrete concepts. Lakoff & Johnson (1980)
illustrate this kind of conceptual metaphor clearly in the following conceptual
metaphor “TIME IS MONEY”.
You're wasting my time.
This gadget will save you hours.
I don't have the time to give you.
I've invested a lot of time in her.
He's living on borrowed time.


In this example, we can see that time, an abstract conceptual reality is
structured according to money that is considered a very valuable commodity and
a limited resource we use to accomplish our goals. Through which, we
understand and experience that time can be wasted, saved, given, invested,
borrowed, and so on. In other words, the concept of work has developed where
it is typically associated with the time it takes and time is precisely quantified, it
has become customary to pay people by the hour, week, or year.
In Vietnamese literary work and our everyday life, structural metaphors
are also found. Let's see the metaphorical concept LIFE IS A JOURNEY in “Dế
Mèn phiêu lưu ký” by To Hoai
Từ đây, tôi bắt đầu vào cuộc đời của From that day on, I started life on my tôi.
(p.9)

own. (p.8)
This example shows that the life of a cricket is structured according to a

journey. It means that from the day, he left his family to start his new life on his
own. He has to make friends, have new relationships with others, earn for his
living, struggle for his life. Like a journey, he will have a lot of fun, sometimes
meet difficulties and his life may be dangerous or safe, happy or unhappy, that
all depend on how wise he is.
• Ontological Metaphors

Among the three types of conceptual metaphors, the ontological metaphor
is regarded as one of the least noticeable ones. In this type, something concrete
is projected onto something abstract. They are so natural and persuasive in our
thought that they are usually taken as self - evident, direct descriptions of mental
phenomena (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980:16).
On the whole, ontological metaphors help us to recognize the structure
delineated more sharply where we may not or hardly find them. We can also use
ontological metaphors to understand events, actions, states, and activities that


are conceptualized into groups; events, and actions as objects, activities as
substance, and states as containers on the view of ontological metaphors. In
Metaphor - A practical introduction (2002), Kovecses states source and target
domains in Ontological metaphors clearly in the following table:
Table 2.1 Source and target domains in Ontological metaphors (Kovecses, 2002:35)

Source domains

Target Domains
NONPHYSICAL OR ABSTRACT ENTITIES (e.g.,

PHYSICAL

the mind)

OBJECT

-> EVENTS (e.g., going to the race), ACTIONS (e.g.,
giving someone a call)

SUBSTANCE

-> ACTIVITIES (e.g., a lot of running in the game)
UNDELINEATED PHYSICAL OBJECTS (e.g., a
clearing in the forest)

CONTAINER

PHYSICAL AND NONPHYSICAL SURFACES
(e.g., land areas, the visual field)
-> STATES (e.g., in love)

Let's study the INFLATION IS AN ENTITY metaphor to understand
the insight of the ontological metaphor.
Inflation is lowering our standard of living.
If there's much more inflation, we'll never survive.
We need to combat inflation.
Inflation is hacking us into a corner.
Inflation is taking its toll at the checkout counter and the gas pump.


Buying land is the best way of dealing with inflation.
Inflation makes me sick.

It is clear that take the experience of rising prices, which can be
metaphorically viewed as an entity via the noun inflation. In the above cases,
viewing inflation as an entity allows us to refer to it, quantify it, identify a
particular aspect of it, see it as a cause, act with respect to it, and perhaps even
believe that we understand it (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980:26).
We can also understand more about this type of conceptual metaphors by
analyzing the following metaphorical expressions appearing in “Dế Mèn phiêu
lưu kí” by To Hoai.
PLANT IS A PERSON
Willow trees wink and marvel. (p.97)
The above examples show that To Hoai conceptualizes plant as a
person. The expressions such as “mỉm miệng”, “giương mày” are used to
indicate the characteristic of a person that is mapped onto the abstract thing. To
Hoai means that after the worse of the winter, the spring comes and brings all
species joy and happiness.
Moreover, ontological metaphors are also used to comprehend events,
actions, activities, and states. People conceptualize events and actions
metaphorically as objects, activities as sub-stances, states as containers.
Take STATES ARE CONTAINERS as an example.
We're out of trouble now.
Liễu giương mày. (p.127)
He's coming out of the coma. I'm slowly getting into shape. He entered a
state of euphoria. He fell into a depression. (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980:32)
As can be seen from the examples, emotions, and states are
conceptualizes as a container and conceptualize what we experience and feel as


if they are inside it.
• Orientational Metaphors

An orientational metaphor is a metaphor that refers to relationships of
space. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) define this kind as one that doesn't build one
concept in terms of another but instead constructs a whole system of concepts
with respect to one another and most of them have to do with a spatial
orientation such as central - peripheral, in-out, up-down, on-off, deep - shallow,
front - back. Take the following examples as an illustration of this orientational
metaphor.
MORE IS UP; LESS IS DOWN
Speak up, please. Keep your voice down, please
HAPPY IS UP; SAD IS DOWN
I'm feeling up today. He's really low these days.
HEALTHY IS UP; SICK IS DOWN
Lazarus rose from the dead. He fell ill.
CONTROL IS UP; LACK OF CONTROL IS DOWN
I'm on top of the situation. He is under my control.
VIRTUE IS UP; LACK OF VIRTUE IS DOWN
She's an upstanding citizen. That was a low - down thing to do
RATIONAL IS UP; NONRATIONAL IS DOWN
The discussion fell to an emotional level. He couldn't rise above his
emotions.
CONSCIOUS IS UP; UNCONSCIOUS IS DOWN
Wake up. He sank into a coma.
(Kovecses, 2002:36)
From the examples, Kovecses shows us that all the concepts are
characterized by an “upward” orientation, while their opposites have a


“downward” one. For example, the conceptual metaphor “HAPPY IS UP, SAD
IS DOWN” is originated from the dependency of body posture on personal
feelings. As a rule, people tend to bow down when they feel sad or depressed.

Nevertheless, they are likely to raise up their head and straight up their back
when they are happy and satisfied. Thus, the orientational conceptual metaphors
are not arbitrary but based on culture and experiences.
2.1.3.4.

Mapping in metaphors

Lakoff (1993) states that in fact, metaphors can be defined as “a crossdomain mapping in the conceptual system”, which comprises a tightly
structured set of correspondences. Mapping is considered as a set of systematic
correspondences that exist between the source and the target domain. Therefore,
metaphors are sets of mapping across conceptual domains (Kovecses, 2002:24).
Let us take the LOVE IS A JOURNEY as an example. There are a set of
mappings between the source and the target domain:
Table 2.2. The metaphoric mapping of LOVE IS A JOURNEY
(Kovecses, 2002:7)

Source: JOURNEY

Target: LOVE

The travelers

The lovers

The vehicle

The love relationship itself

The journey

Events in the relationship

The distance covered

The progress made

The obstacles encountered

The difficulties experienced

The decisions about which way to go Choices about what to do
The destination of the journey

The goals of the relationship

There is a set of systematic correspondences according to which
entities in the domain of love such as the lovers, the relationship, events in the
relationships, the progress, the difficulties, choices about what to do and the
goals, etc. correspond systematically to entities in the domain of a journey such


as the travelers, the vehicles, the journey, the distance, the obstacles the
decisions, the destination, etc. The application of the journey domain to love
domain provides the concept of love with this particular structure or set of
elements.
2.1.4.
2.1.4.1.

Theory of Translation
Definition of Translation

Some authors have given the following different definitions of translation.
In 1995 in the book A linguistic Theory of Translation, Catford shows that
translation is not a dangerous technique in itself provided its nature is
understood, and its use is carefully controlled and the translation is in itself a
valuable skill to be imparted to students. Furthermore, translation is an operation
performed in languages and also a process of substituting a text in one language
for a text in another. More specifically, translation is the replacement of textual
material in one language (source language) by equivalent textual material in
another language (target language).
Nguyễn Hồng Cổn (2004) states that the activity of translation is still a
language activity and language plays core and basic roles. However, he says that
together with the attention to the linguistic problem, translators also need to pay
attention to the problems relating to the source language and target language
such as social environment, culture, religion.
Furthermore, Vũ Văn Đại (2001) claims that there is a un equivalence in the
culture of translators and original texts so, in order to become good translators,
it's very necessary to enrich the cultural and national knowledge of target
language
Peter Newmark (1981) indicates that translation is rendering the meaning
of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text.
As implied in the definitions above, translation is basically a change of