Katan (2004:3) states "`Translating across cultures' and `cultural proficiency' have become buzz words in translation and interpreting", and "many scholars have now adopted a `cultural' perspective". According to Peng Li, “this trend starts with the publication of the book Translation, History and Culture co-edited by Bassnett and Lefevere who were the first to suggest that translation studies take the ‘cultural turn’ and look toward work of cultural studies scholars for inspirations of solving translation problems(Bassnett &Lefevere, 2001:ix). And their book is regarded by scholars home and abroad as the milestone in translation studies.”

2.2 Metaphor

2.2.1 Definition of metaphor

Metaphor is commonly known as a figure of speech that identifies one thing as being the same as some unrelated other things, thus strongly implying the similarities between the two. 

According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary the 7th edition, metaphor is defined as followed: A word or phrase used to describe somebody or something else, in a way that is different from its normal use, in order to show that two things have the same qualities and to make the description more powerful; the use of such words and phrases. According to Webster Dictionary of English Language(1979) , metaphor is “a figure of speech in which one thing is likened to another, different things by being spoken of as if it were that other.” 

Aristotle defines metaphor to be “the movement of an alien word from either genus to species or from species to genus or from species to species or by an analogy”. Shu Dingfang wrote in her paper that “Aristotle thinks that metaphor is the replacement of one word of another to express similar meanings. The two words are comparative, which also means that metaphor is coherent with simile in nature.” (Shu Dingfang, 2000:2)

 Newmark defines metaphor as followed: “By metaphor, I mean any figurative expression: the transferred sense of a physical word; the personification of an abstraction; the application of a word or collocation to what it does not literally denote; metaphors may be 'single'-viz. one-word- or 'extended'(a text)” (Newmark, 1988:104).