Topic: A Corpus-based Study of Translation of Chinese Key Discourses in Metaphorical Expression

Time: 14:30-16:30，December 17, 2018  

Venue: B202, Teaching Building 6  

Participants: Pro. Lu Zhi, Ph. D candidates and MA students, etc.  

Commentator: Prof. Zeng Lisha   

Speaker: Hu Jian

The speaker, Hu Jian, set up a 600,000 corpus by inputting the bilingual State Council Work Report (2000-2018). He made some discourse analyses on political discourse and metaphorical expressions. He believes that the metaphorical expressions and their translation are crucial in Chinese foreign affairs. He applied corpus-based methods and tools to carrying out his research on metaphors collected in the Report. He exemplified his research by some detailed and interesting cases.

   After the speech, Pro. Zeng Lisha inspired discussion and questions from the audience. Dr. Lv Jie questioned whether a clear boundary on metaphors should be made in the research. PH.D student Zhang Xiao thought there was a weak link between the research and translation studies. Pro. Zeng summarized some good points in the research and then made some suggestions, such as the conception and classification of metaphors should be clarified; both connotation and denotation of metaphors in political discourse should be covered; the pragmatic meaning and cognitive thinking should be considered in political metaphorical expressions; case analyses should be typical... Pro. Lu proposed that it was of great importance and necessity to stress the significance and research questions; the context for political discourse might be complex and dynamic; whether it is necessary to borrow other corpus to make comparison…

The Forum lasted for more than two hours with heated discussion and comments. All participants benefit a lot from the forum including the speaker himself.