Abstract：Being an indispensable means of thinking for human beings, the study of metaphor can date back to more than two thousand years ago. Traditionally, metaphor was merely defined as a rhetorical device and was deemed as a way of ornamenting of language. Metaphor can be easily found in many aspects in human daily life and it is not only a linguistic phenomenon, but also a human’s way of thinking. New ideas can be expressed and at the same time new meanings can be created by using metaphor. Being widely utilized in both daily life and literary works, metaphor and metaphor translation have captured a great attention of scholars from entirely different fields recently, such as Linguistics, philosophy and psychology.

Qian Zhongshu, an ingenious Chinese scholar and brilliant writer, is famous for his unique literary work-Fortress Besieged. Abundant in a variety of metaphors, full of humor, imagination and novelty, his novel created a distinctive literary world, which is inundated by genuine and profound feelings towards life. Qian employed a large number of various metaphors, and it is these metaphors make the novel a good material for metaphor study. This paper attempts to classify the category of metaphors and analyze concrete metaphor translation strategies applied in Fortress Besieged. Text analysis is used as the main research methodology to identify metaphor classifications and translation strategies in this research.

Key words: metaphor, Fortress Besieged, translation strategies, text analysis

摘要：隐喻是人类思维的不可或缺的手段，关于隐喻的相关研究可以追溯到两千多年前。传统观点认为，隐喻不仅被定义为一种修辞手段，而且被视为语言装饰的一种方式。然而，隐喻出现在人们日常生活的方方面面，隐喻的使用可以展现新的语言表达方式。在日常生活和文学作品中广泛使用的隐喻及其翻译方式已经备受语言学、哲学和心理学等不同领域学者的关注。

钱钟书是一位知识渊博的中国学者和杰出的作家，其独特的文学作品《围城》中丰富的各种隐喻充满幽默、想象力和新奇感，创造了一个独特的文学世界，充满了真实而深刻的人生感受。钱钟书运用了大量的各种隐喻，正是这些隐喻使小说成为隐喻研究的一个很好的材料。本文试图对隐喻进行分类，并分析在《围城》中应用的具体隐喻的翻译策略。本研究采用文本分析作为识别隐喻分类和翻译策略的主要研究方法。

关键词：隐喻，《围城》，翻译策略，文本分析

CONTENTS

Acknowledgement i

Abstract ii

摘要 iii

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Introduction to Qian Zhongshu and His Fortress Besieged 1

1.2 Metaphor and Its Translation 2

1.3 Organization of the Thesis 4

2 Literary Review 5

2.1 Previous Studies on Fortress Besieged 5

2.2 Relevant Studies on Metaphor Translation 6

3 Analysis of Metaphor in Fortress Besieged 9

3.1 Classifications of Metaphor in Fortress Besieged 9

3.2 Features of Metaphor in Fortress Besieged 13

4 Translation Strategies of Metaphor in Fortress Besieged 16

4.1 Literal Translation 16

4.2 Free Translation 17

4.3 Conversion of Metaphor to Simile 19

5 Conclusion 21

Bibliography 22

1 Introduction

This paper attempts to give a brief introduction to Qian Zhongshu, his famous Fortress Besieged, as well as the definition of metaphor. The organization of this paper is also briefly introduced. Qian is a famous critical realist writer in the history of Chinese literature, and the most eye-catching feature of the novel is the large number of metaphorical expressions.Being an important means for the thinking of human beings, metaphor actively participates in the process of cognition. Our thought is closely related with metaphor all the time. First of all, provides us with an approach to understand and observe the natural word. Secondly, metaphor conceptualizes our experience. Moreover, metaphor creates new meanings and expresses new ideas. Being commonly used in both literary works and daily life，metaphor has attracted scholars from different fields in recent years，such as Linguistics，psychology and philosophy. Full of metaphors, rich in imagination and novelty, Ch’ien Chung-shu’s only long novel-Fortress Besieged is not only popular for its theme but also for its vivid and interesting language. Qian put a large number of various figures of speech into use, and there are totally more than 600 metaphors in this novel, including plenty of common metaphors and some unique ones that come from writer’s own experience. It is these metaphors that make the novel so special, and it can serve as a good material for metaphor study.The novel is translated into many languages. The most well-known English version is translated by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao. Since this English version was published, it has caught many scholars’ eyes. Many scholars regard it as a model to study metaphors and they apply different theories to the research on it.