A contrastive study of English and translated Chinese metaphors used in cancer characterization and cancer experience from The Emperor of all Maladies: a biography of cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

• Main Author: Liu, Abielle Shao Hua
• Other Authors: Lin Tzer Liang, Benedict Christopher
• Format: Thesis-Master by Coursework
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2024
• Subjects: Arts and Humanities; Cross-cultural variation; Metaphor; Oncology; Cancer
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/178376
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer is a book that offers not only a clinical perspective but also an intimate and elegant introspection of cancer, a disease which has multifaceted impact on politics, society, and the economy. In this book, metaphors are skillfully employed to depict cancer and cancer experience to provide vivid illustrations of its effects on individuals. Given the culturally unique conceptualization of health and the portrayal of cancer across different sociocultural contexts, it is essential to do a contrastive analysis of the English metaphors used in The Emperor of all Maladies and the Chinese metaphors used in its translation, 《众病之王：癌症传》. The metaphors found in both texts can be broadly categorized into four major themes:1) SOURCE-PATH GOAL 2) ANIMACY 3) VIOLENCE/HARM and 4) Non-living objects/entity properties. Despite efforts to retain the source text’s original meaning with the same theme and image, this study revealed cultural variations that often result in nuanced differences in how the perception and experience of cancer are conveyed to target readers. These differences stem from the translator's translation choices and target reader’s interpretation, influenced by their own sociocultural environment. Among the major themes, the analysis revealed that the ANIMACY theme had the most modification: here, cancer’s animacy and personification is altered because of the lack of equivalent expressions in the translation, a result of cultural vacancy. The SOURCE-PATH-GOAL and VIOLENCE/HARM themes were relatively well retained. Overall, despite the prominent influence of Confucianism, Taoism and Traditional Chinese Medicine accounting for differences in cultural nuances between the source and target texts, the target text is generally a faithful translation with the trends in the frequency of different metaphor themes consistent to those of the source text.