What is generally referred to as connotative meaning can also be captured by the concept of mapping as used in CMT. Let us take the example of the metaphorical idiom to spit fire. The special idiomatic meaning of to spit fire is more than just ‘to be very angry’. To account for this, we need to a distinction between two kinds of metaphoric mapping: “ontological” and “epistemic” (see Lakoff, Kövecses 1987;
Lakoff 1993). Ontological mappings are correspondences between basic constituent elements in the source domain and constituent elements in the target (such as the mappings in the previous subsection). The epistemic mappings, on the other hand, carry over knowledge about the elements in the source domain onto elements in the target domain. Speakers using particular conceptual metaphors will apply epistemic mappings, or inferences, from one domain to another. The expression spit fire is associated with the knowledge that when the fire is intense and it is not under control, it is dangerous—both for the thing burning and other objects nearby.
Speakers habitually make the same inference about anger employing fire as the source domain: when anger is intense and out of control, it is dangerous both for the angry person and others (for more examples of this kind of metaphorical inference, see Lakoff 1993; Gibbs 1994; Kövecses 2000b).
It is the same metaphorical inference pattern that helps us explain subtle differences in the meaning of spit fire and other related idioms with similar
‘denotative’ meaning (i.e., the meaning that several related idioms share). Thus, for example, the idioms smoke coming out of one’s ears and be burned up share the meaning with spit fire: ‘be very angry’, which is based on the ANGER IS FIRE
metaphor and its ontological correspondence ‘intensity of the (heat of) fire intensity of the anger’. These idioms, however, carry very different inferences (i.e., connotations) for speakers.
Idiom Inferences
to spit fire The anger is intense but out of control and
thus dangerous to the angry person and others
smoke coming out of one’s ears The anger is intense but essentially under control, however, it is potentially dangerous
to be burned up The angry person has completely lost
rational control
In sum, the obvious challenge for translators is to find translation equivalents that meet all three matching conditions above: general meaning, specific meaning, and connotative meaning; that is, to find the translation equivalents that are characterized by the same mappings (general, specific and connotative). Clearly, this is a major source of difficulty in metaphor translation.
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5. Conclusions
My main goal in this paper was to identify the nature of some of the systematic difficulties in the translation of metaphors. I identified several areas of difficulties from the perspective of conceptual metaphor theory.
I noted that a narrow conception of conceptual metaphor theory would lead us to believe that universal embodiment produces the same universal metaphors. These would in turn be easy to translate. However, this would be a mistaken view of conceptual metaphors and it would lead to the wrong assumption regarding metaphor translation. For better or worse, we live in a cognitively more complicated universe.
First, context plays a major role in both the production and comprehension of metaphors. A variety of contextual factors are responsible for variation in the use of metaphors. As a result, since the contexts in which different languages are used vary, the translation of metaphors inevitably poses a challenge: How do we render a metaphor in one language in another if the metaphors in the two languages emerge in different contexts?
Second, even if two languages share a conceptual metaphor, there are at least three (maybe even four) different possibilities for translating a metaphor from one language to another. The translator has to choose the most adequate possibility. This is not always an easy choice, and so represents a further source of difficulties.
Third, I argued that expressions denoting abstract concepts in one language can in many cases be translated into another by metaphor or metonymy3. It is an open question whether this is the case all of the time. If so, this would go against the commonly held view that the translation of such metaphoric expressions can be accomplished by means of a literal expression. This accounts for an additional difficulty in metaphor translation: If there is no obvious metaphorical or metonymic choice, what should be the apparently literal expression that corresponds to the metaphor that needs to be translated?
Fourth, and finally, I identified three “matching conditions” that correspond to three types of metaphor mappings: the scope of a source domain (the set of targets to which it applies); the set of specific mappings (or conceptual correspondences) that obtain between a source and a target, and the knowledge that pertains to the elements of a source that (can) get carried over to the target domain. In the ideal case, all of them should be met for the best translation. In many cases, it is not possible to comply with all three conditions. This is a major obstacle to metaphor translation.
These sources of the difficulty in the translation of metaphors are systematic ones that derive from major tenets of one version of conceptual metaphor theory. The tenets and what follows from them for a theory of metaphor translation are of course open to debate. In addition, I assume that there are many other issues that pose problems for metaphor translation. However, my goal was to outline the systematic difficulties that emerge from the foundational ideas of conceptual metaphor theory, as I see them at present.
3 It is an open question whether this is the case all of the time. There are theoretical reasons to think that it is the case (see Kövecses, 2006).
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