A Corpus-based Study on the Translation Strategies of Metaphors in President Xi's New Year's Speeches – A Case Study of New Year's Speeches from 2017 to 2022

Abstract

The president's Speech for a New Year includes both the summary of the past year and the outlook for the coming year, which plays an important role in expressing good wishes and displaying the national image. Various types of metaphorical expressions frequently appear in President Xi's New Year's Speech. This paper selects the New Year's Speeches from 2017 to 2022 and builds a bilingual parallel corpus to explore the translation methods of metaphors in them. This study found that there are 4 main translation methods in them, which are literal translation for remaining metaphors, free translation to adjust metaphors, addition of similes or metaphors, and omission to delete metaphors. On this basis, this study proposed that different translation strategies should be adopted from the aspects of text type, cultural context, language characteristics, and readers' acceptance to maximize the effectiveness of the source text, so as to avoid cultural default and misreading. Keywords: New Year's speeches, metaphor, C-E translation strategy, Corpus-