A Study Of Satirical Metaphor Translation In Fortress Besieged From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

This paper explores the translation of satirical metaphors in Fortress Besieged, the English version of Wei Cheng, from the perspective of relevance theory.Metaphor is a universal linguistic phenomenon, and each language has abundant metaphors. Metaphor is traditionally confined to rhetoric and regarded as a kind of linguistic decoration. Modern metaphor study grants it a cognitive sense. The translation of metaphor has always attracted the attention of both translators and scholars. However, owing to the peculiarities of metaphor which are imbued with linguistic and cultural uniqueness, there exists controversy on metaphor translation. In1986, Sperber and Wilson put forward the relevance theory which provided a new perspective for metaphor translation. Relevance theory claims that the nature of translation is an interpretive use of language and as any other communicative activities, it aims at achieving optimal relevance, making the target readers obtain maximum contextual effect with minimum effort. And metaphor is a kind of "Loose Talk" and it is just an ordinary utterance which requires no special interpretive ability under relevance theory.Satirical metaphor, a combined use of satire and metaphor, is a form of expression which can be frequently seen in literary works. It circuitously caricatures an object by comparing it to a similar object to bring about the satirical effects in a more implicit and witty way. Fortress Besieged, written by Ch’ien Chung-shu, is a great novel in satirical literature. It features in its employment of numerous brilliant metaphors to achieve satirical effects. This novel was first translated into English by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao in the1970s and a highly demanding challenge imposed on them was to address the translation of these novel metaphors and represent its satirical effects. Because of the disparity of the two languages and cultural differences, there exist many obstacles to successful translation.Therefore, this thesis tries to explore the translation of satirical metaphors under the framework of relevance theory. Drawing on the essence of this theory, the paper analyzes and comments on the translation of satirical metaphors as well as the translation strategies, and provides some suggested versions on certain inadequacies in an effort to arouse readers’interest in translation of metaphors combined with satire. Based on the case study, the paper points out that owing to Ch’ien’s years of overseas study, his novel is rich in western-culture-related metaphors, which are familiar to western readers. Therefore, the translators mainly adopt direct translation by retaining the original metaphor in the translation. They expect the target readers to make certain efforts for achieving the communication. Besides, indirect translation is also employed to help target readers get enough contextual effects. However, only satirical metaphors with cultural overlapping could achieve optimal relevance while in other cases, due to the complexity of metaphor itself and the existence of cultural differences, some satirical metaphor translations fail to convey the satirical effects as the Chinese readers would appreciate, and thus optimal relevance is not achieved at times.