On Translating Metaphor In Fortress Besieged From The Perspective Of Cultural Context Dynamic Adaptation

Based on The Adaptation Theory (AT), proposed by verschueren in 1999, this thesis explores how metaphor in Fortress Besieged is transferred from Chinese to English. The study on the relationship between the context and language using has stepped into a new stage, in the light of Jef Verschueren's Adaptation Theory. The Adaptation Theory, which elaborates on dynamic meaning generating in various contexts and dynamic context adaptation, is applied to translation studies in the present thesis. It can be said that in the adaptability framework, translation is not a fixed and static but a dynamic activity, and a translator should adapt the translated text to cultural context constantly and select linguistic forms to express truthfully the communicative intention of the original text in the translating process.Metaphor is regarded as a universal linguistic phenomenon. In fact, metaphor is not only a rhetorical device, but also a kind of universal thinking concept possessed by human beings. The data are collected from the famous Chinese novel Fortress Besieged (Wei Cheng) written by Qian Zhongshu in 1946. The writer employs a great many linguistic techniques to create a large number of original metaphors, which are harmoniously organized in the famous novel and have its distinct artistic attractiveness and humorous effect. The novel was translated into English by Jeanne Kelly together with Nathan K. Mao. Since it was published in 1979, it had been achieved a great success with a warm welcome. By focusing on collecting, displaying and analyzing the data of all the Chinese original metaphors found in the novel, this thesis makes a comparison between each metaphor in the original Chinese and the English version, based on the previous research, from the perspective of dynamic adaptation of cultural context.Compared with each item, it was estimated that the metaphor reached to 108. According to the characteristics of data itself, it can be divided into 2 major types: describing things and caricaturing people. What's more, it was elaborated on the approaches of translating metaphor in the Fortress Besieged. There are 4 approaches employed: literal translation, liberal translation, shift of perspective translation and annotation translation. We draw a conclusion as below: 1) Dynamic adaptation of cultural context is an efficient guide to deal with the cultural barriers caused by different cultural contexts between Chinese and English in translating metaphors; 2) Although most of the metaphors are translated perfectly in the light of dynamic adaptation of cultural context, there are still a few cases which are not adapted to cultural context to some extent. Therefore, some suggestions are given on the basis of the analysis.