A Study of Conceptual Metaphors and Metaphor Translation Strategies in the Report on the Work of the Government (2002-2022)

Abstract

As an authoritative political text that conveys China’s voice, promotes China’s ideas and shapes China’s image, the rich metaphorical expressions used in the Report on the Work of the Government plays an important role in strengthening China’s political publicity and promoting cultural exchanges with foreign countries, which are widely noticed and interpreted by people at home and abroad. This study took the 2002-2022 Report on the Work of the Government (bilingual version) as the research subjects, summarized the types of metaphors in the report, and explored the strategies used in metaphor translation, so as to provide new and effective references and ideas for the conceptual metaphors’ translation in political texts. The study drew the following conclusions: (1) The metaphors in the report are various and rich, with 14 types of metaphors included: architectural metaphor, artifact metaphor, war metaphor, journey metaphor, personification metaphor, transportation metaphor, and so on. Among them, the most frequently used metaphor types are first four types; (2) the translation strategies of conceptual metaphors in the report are mainly three ones, namely, retaining metaphor, translating metaphor by deleting metaphor but conveying the meaning, and replacing metaphor with another. The first two translation strategies are used more frequently.