Translating Cognitive Metaphor in Fairy Tales: A Corpus-based Study of The Nightingale and the Rose and its Chinese Translations

Authors

Abstract

This study approaches the metaphorical language in Oscar Wilde’s The Nightingale and the Rose and its two Chinese translations from the perspective of cognitive metaphor, by means of a corpus-based approach. Statistical analysis assisted by the corpus tool Sketch Engine reveals that the writer uses nine types of metaphor-related words (MRWs), with indirect metaphors mainly manifest in the form of personification, as well as diverse metaphor flags that create various similes serving as direct metaphors. In the two target texts, the two translators primarily employ strategies of direct metaphor to direct metaphor and indirect metaphor to indirect metaphor, thereby largely maintaining and reproducing the types and expressions of metaphors in the source text, which reflects their understanding of and respect for Oscar Wilde’s cognition. This research offers a brand new standpoint to the analysis of this literary work and its translation and provides some new theoretical and methodological insights for the field of translation studies on fairy tales.

Author Biographies

  • Lin Luo, Hong Kong Baptist University, China

    Lin Luo is a PhD candidate at Department of Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies, Academy of Language and Culture, Hong Kong Baptist University. His research interests lie in literary translation, metaphor in translation and corpus-based translation studies. He is now a member of The Association for Researching and Applying Metaphor (RaAM).

  • Haiyun Huang, Hong Kong Baptist University, China

    Haiyun Huang is a PhD student at Department of Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies, Academy of Language and Culture, Hong Kong Baotist University. Her research interests lie in audiovisual translation, corpus-based translation studies and Chinese opera studies.

  • Mark Shuttleworth, The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, China

    Mark Shuttleworth is Professor and Dean of the School of Translation and Foreign Languages at The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Dictionary of Translation Studies and Studying Scientific Metaphor in Translation: An Inquiry into Cross-lingual Translation Practices.

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Published

2026-07-17

Issue

Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Globalisation/Deglobalisation in Languages, Education, Culture and Communication (GLECC2026)

Section

Session 8 Translation Studies

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.