Abstract

This article performed a qualitative and quantitative comparative study on metaphor translation between Chinese and English advertisements under the guidance of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory. Through an analysis of 100 pieces of well-known English advertisements and their official Chinese translation, the study found that the reflections of nonequivalence between Chinese and English metaphor embodied in the difference or missing of target domain in metaphoric mapping on one hand and the preference of conceptual metaphor types on the other. The purpose of reducing the information loses during the metaphorical conversion can be obtained by properly handling the mapping including adjustment, additions and omissions, and then adjusts the metaphor types according to the culture orientation and cognitive system of the target language. Such strategies can help better highlight the advertising purpose while maintain the poetic function of advertising at the same time.

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