Difficulties in Identifying and Translating Linguistic Metaphors: A Survey and Experiment among Translation Students (original) (raw)
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Coping with Metaphor. A cognitive approach to translating metaphor
HERMES - Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 2017
The present article focuses on the translation of metaphor by expert translators, young professional translators and non-professional translators. The approach adopted here treats translation of metaphor as a conceptual rather than a purely linguistic phenomenon, based on the framework sometimes referred to as conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), which is based on Lakoff & Johnson (1980) and Lakoff & Turner (1989). The basic assumption behind this study is that translating metaphor requires translator competence, which among other things entails an awareness of the duality of the metaphor as both a mental concept and linguistic expressions. It is further assumed that translation competence is developed through extensive training and translation experience. The study starts with a qualitative analysis of the metaphorical expressions and translation strategies in the sample texts, followed by a quantitative analysis whereby the frequencies of metaphor transference across languages and ac...
Linguistics Vanguard, 2024
The aim of this study is to examine the effects of translating literary metaphors from Serbian to English on metaphor quality, aptness, metaphoricity, and familiarity. The research involved 55 Serbian metaphors translated into English using the A is B form, which were then evaluated by 252 participants in two separate studies. Study 1 served as an extension of a previous norming study. In it, a group of participants assessed 55 translated literary metaphorical expressions, and their evaluations were compared to those of the original Serbian versions. In Study 2, a group of participants, divided into two subgroups, rated a collection of both the original metaphorical expressions and their translated counterparts. The results indicate that the translated metaphors generally scored higher in terms of aptness, familiarity, quality, and partially in metaphoricity. These findings suggest that translating the metaphors into English had a positive impact on their perceived effectiveness and familiarity. Several factors are considered to explain these outcomes, including the nature of the English language itself, the participants’ exposure to English, and the translation process. Overall, this study highlights the influence of translation on the perception of literary metaphors and provides insights into metaphor interpretation.
2020
The paper explores the different approaches to metaphor understanding and metaphor translation within the fields linguistics and cognitive linguistics. Semantics scholars view metaphors as "the application of an alien name by transfer either from genus to species, or from species to species, or by analogy"(Aristotle), while pragmatics scholars view metaphor as being dependent on context. Scholars of the cognitive linguistics school (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1987) portray metaphor as a system used to comprehend one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain via sets of correspondences between these two domains. This paper focuses on the main approaches to metaphors understanding, and approaches to metaphor transfer and translation, as metaphor translation represents a burden for translators no matter the language. This is due to the fact that translation involves multiple processes that include both linguistic and non-linguistic elements. Based on linguistics and cognitive linguistics theories, a number approaches and procedures such as prescriptive approach, the descriptive approach and the cognitive approach have been developed by scholars for the translation of metaphorical expressions.
Analyzing Translation of Metaphor: A Case Study
Studies in Linguistics and Literature, 2018
Metaphor translation is often considered as one of the general problems of "untranslatability". This is due to the fact that metaphors are generally associated with indirectness; therefore, it is hard to translate. It is also often influenced by the culture. Thus, the translator has to carefully consider how to translate metaphor. This paper analyzes metaphor translation in Lauren Kate's novel entitled Fallen using a framework proposed by Peter Newmark (1988). It is revealed that there are five procedures applied to translate the metaphors namely reproducing the same image in the TL, replacing SL image with a standard TL image, translating metaphor by simile, converting the metaphor into sense, and deleting the metaphor. The possible reasons to use the particular procedures are because the SL images are universal images, the SL images have broad definition or quality, the SL images are confusing, the SL images are offensive, and the SL images are religious terms.
Australian Journal of Linguistics, 2018
Acknowledging the necessity of achieving cognitive equivalence in the target culture in translation, this study attempts to demonstrate the efficacy of the incorporation of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) into the curriculum of translation classrooms for translating metaphorical language more accurately. With this aim, a case study was designed after the collection of 10 simile-based idioms constructed with white and black colours from English metaphor and idiom dictionaries. Among the 10, five idioms were with similar mapping conditions (SMC) and the other five were with different mapping conditions (DMC) with Turkish. Eighty students studying at the
Translation Of Metaphor:, The Dilemma Of Conceptualisation
Salah Bouregbi, 2019
Any translation is subject to mental processing. In a literary text, this processing is very problematic. Words and expressions that vehicle such transfer do not (re)produce the source faithfully. The received image could be perceived and conceived differently because of language suggestiveness. Undoubtedly, Cognitive Process of thinking is helpful in understanding and actualizing thoughts into words and expressions. But how could it be with metaphor? Is it transferrable? Are we able to reproduce and transfer the same image from the source to the target? Metaphor is shaped and mapped within the culture that produces it, but differences in culture become the clue of the problem. The way to conceptualise and perceive it is dialogically related to the degree of differences and similarities of the SLT (Source Language Text) and TLT (Target Language Text).
Translating developed metaphors
Cognitive understandings of metaphor have led to significant advances in understandings of how to translate metaphor. Theoretical accounts of metaphor not as a figure of speech but as a mode of thought, have provided useful tools for analysis and for translation work. This has usually happened at the level of individual metaphorical expressions, while the deeper lesson of cognitive theories has not been taken to heart by translation scholars, with a few signal exceptions. In this article we explore the potential of Conceptual Metaphor Theory for translating related metaphorical expressions within a specific text. We propose a model for understanding metaphor translation that takes as its unit of analysis not the individual metaphorical expression, but the conceptual metaphor of which the metaphorical expression is but a particular instantiation. It is this theoretical grounding that will allow us to propose a model for translating developed metaphors and related metaphorical expressions.
Metaphor and translational difficulties
It has become more or less a commonplace that whenever we translate from one language into another, there are two different conceptual systems involved. Many difficulties in translation arise from such differences between conceptual systems. And since conceptual systems emerge and are used in context, contextual differences may also lead to problems in translation. In my paper, I focus on metaphorical concepts and characterize the metaphorical conceptual system in general. I also discuss how context plays a role in shaping the metaphorical mind. I point out that a number of problems in translation arise from differences in metaphorical conceptual systems and the contexts in which they emerge.
Chapter 3: Metaphor and Translation Studies
It is now accepted as axiomatic that metaphor pervades all kinds of human discourse, and popular scientific texts are no exception. Indeed, such texts often contain a remarkable number of metaphorical expressions, metaphor in popular science fulfilling a number of different functions. This thesis involves a text-based analysis of nearly 1400 translation examples drawn from a corpus consisting of the official published translations into French, Italian, German, Russian and Polish of 62 Scientific American articles that appeared between January 2003 and July 2004. It aims to provide a broadly qualitative analysis of the kinds of solution that translators commonly resort to in rendering both single metaphorical expressions and entire underlying structures. One of the main advantages of such a data-rich multilingual study is that it can potentially produce results that allow one to draw conclusions about a particular aspect of translation at a high level of generalisation, and this is a benefit that the work seeks to exploit. The approach adopted is inductive, and the thesis offers a categorisation of source-text metaphorical expressions along the lines of the following seven parameters: mapping, typological class, provenance, richness, level of categorisation, purpose and conventionality. Of these, three are used to produce a detailed analysis of the translation patterns contained in the corpus, the use of multiple parameters in this way making it possible to view the data from a range of different angles. Throughout, the work is informed by the insights of translation studies and metaphor studies, and indeed explores the relationship between these two disciplines. However, its ultimate centre of gravity lies within translation studies.
Metaphor and translation: some implications of a cognitive approach
Journal of Pragmatics, 2004
Metaphor has been widely discussed within the discipline of Translation Studies, predominantly with respect to translatability and transfer methods. It has been argued that metaphors can become a translation problem, since transferring them from one language and culture to another one may be hampered by linguistic and cultural differences. A number of translation procedures for dealing with this problem have been suggested, e.g., substitution (metaphor into different metaphor), paraphrase (metaphor into sense), or deletion. Such procedures have been commented on both in normative models of translation (how to translate metaphors) and in descriptive models (how metaphors have been dealt with in actual translations). After a short overview of how metaphor has been dealt with in the discipline of Translation Studies, this paper discusses some implications of a cognitive approach to metaphors for translation theory and practice. Illustrations from authentic source and target texts (English and German, political discourse) show how translators handled metaphorical expressions, and what effects this had for the text itself, for text reception by the addressees, and for subsequent discursive developments.