Translation of Metaphors in Literary Discourse — An Analysis of Weicheng and Fortress Besieged

摘要

Metaphor has traditionally been viewed as the most important form of figurative language, and is generally seen as reaching its most sophisticated forms in literary language. Metaphors in literary works are also usually rich in culture-specific connotations, which give rise to difficulties in the translation process. This study aims to analyse the Chinese-to-English translation approaches to rendering metaphors in literary discourse, with specific reference to Ch’ien Chung-shu’s masterpiece Weicheng and its English version Fortress Besieged translated by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao. Due to the limitations on the scope of this thesis, the study will focus on the three major types of metaphor in the Chinese language: simile, An Yu and Jie Yu. Chapter Two of this thesis will present a general overview of relevant theories. It will start with the nature of metaphor (i.e. definition, function, classification and cultural connotation), and then discuss the issues of translating metaphors, including metaphors’ translatability, translation approaches and factors that influence the strategy-selection. It will also review previous case studies of metaphor translation in literary discourse. Chapter Three will introduce the corpus and the methodology of this study. Chapter Four will explore the strategies employed by translators to handle non-cultural and cultural metaphors (i.e. simile, An Yu and Jie Yu) in literary discourse, which will be supported by illustrative statistics and detailed analysis of the examples I selected from Weicheng and Fortress Besieged. Chapter Five will present the conclusions of this study, which include the translation of metaphor by the translators in Fortress Besieged, as well as support for the view that a competent literary translator should be both bilingual and bicultural, and should give comprehensive consideration to multiple factors in translation process, such as the original text type, the linguistic means available in the TL and the target readers’ acceptance, so as to choose the optimal translation strategies.