Modern Social Science Research

The core lexical concepts embodied in the Book of Poetry carry rich cultural connotations. Taking Xu Yuanchong’s English translations of the poem titles in the Book of Poetry as the research object, this paper analyzes their meaning-construction strategies within the framework of meaning construction in Vyvyan Evans’s Lexical Concepts and Cognitive Models Theory. The study finds that, through integration and interpretation, Xu’s translated titles effectively convey the themes of the poems. Although certain semantic differences exist between source-language and target-language lexical items, the translations still fulfill the functions of poem titles and largely accord with the cognitive patterns of target readers, thus offering useful implications for the translation of titles in Chinese classics.

Book of Poetry titles; Lexical Concepts and Cognitive Models Theory; Meaning construction; Cognitive models