Abstract: Conceptual blending theory proposed by Fauconnier discloses the cognitive mechanism on how human information is integrated and constructs emergent meaning. While metonymy,a fundamental way of human thinking,can provide mental access for the comprehension of conceptual entities. By making a case study on Lin Yutang's Six Chapters of a Floating Life,we explore the cognitive mechanism of hemi-classical Chinese translation from the perspectives of conceptual blending and metonymy. The analysis reveals that metonymic thinking could afford to explain the cognitive motivation of information rearrangement occurring in original information space in deconstruction of source language. The rearranged information could then partake in constructing the translation via conceptual blending process. And the translation thus constructed would inherit some metonymic characteristic,and to some degree demonstrate the fact of cognitive subject's subconscious utilization of metonymic thinking. Researches of translation process from the perspectives of conceptual blending and metonymy could reveal the cognitive selection by cognitive subject in the process of translation construction on one hand,and facilitate translation practice and translation teaching on the other.

Key words: conceptual blending-metonymy model, conceptual blending, metonymy, translation of hemi-classical Chinese, Six Chapters of a Floating Life