In Translation Studies, the metaphor has been dealt with from the point of view of translatability and untranslatability as noted above. Dagut (1976: 28), for example, argues that the translatability or untranslatability of metaphor is ruled by “the extent to which the cultural experience and associations it draws are shared by the speakers of the particular TL”. Dagut distinguishes between three cases of metaphor translation:
• Novel metaphors which, he argues, are untranslatable;
• Translatable metaphors which Dagut describes as “ephemeral”: this category includes conventional metaphors that have lost their metaphoric origins and are no longer perceived as metaphors by the language users;
• New metaphors that enter in use by the language speakers and hence lose their novelty and uniqueness (stock metaphors).
Dagut’s study focuses on distinguishing metaphor from polysemy and idioms. He argues that metaphor is a ‘special’ case of language and culture; he measures its translatability by the degree of the shared ground between cultural experience and semantic associations. Despite the distinction Dagut (1976) makes between the categories of metaphors, he focuses only on the translation of the novel ones. In addition, there seems to be no practical implication for the distinction between the two last categories (“ephemeral” and “stock” metaphors) as both categories refer to metaphors that became part of the common language.
Nevertheless, it is thought here that the commonness of ephemeral and new metaphors does not deprive them of the semantic and cultural content that may give rise to the same translation problems as those arising from the translation of novel metaphors.
40
Like Dagut (1976), several other scholars have focused on the translatability/untranslatability of metaphors giving particular attention to novel metaphors.
Van den Broeck (1981: 78), for example, states that:
With regard to the use and function of metaphors a traditional typology of texts will be of little use. The only plausible distinction seems to be that between creative and non-creative language use, in that in the former metaphor as such is functionally relevant, whereas in the latter it is most likely not to be. (Van den Broeck,1981: 78).
Van den Broeck (1981) proposes the following typology for metaphor translation:
1. Translation “sensu stricto” if the “vehicle” and “tenor” correspond between SL and TL;
2. The substitution of the vehicle of SL by a different one in the TL; 3. The deletion of metaphor in the TL and its replacement by a paraphrase.
Van den Broeck argues that the solution chosen to render a metaphor depends on the genre of the text in which it is used. For example, literary texts are said to use creative metaphors which, in his opinion, pose translation problems. However, he argues that scientific texts do not pose any problem in terms of “rendering them metaphorically or non- metaphorically” (ibid.:78). The reason for this, according to Van Den Broeck, is that scientific metaphors are universal.
Van Den Broek (ibid.) is one of the first translation scholars to investigate how metaphors are translated in scientific texts and to link the metaphor function to the genre where it is used. He also challenged the issue of untranslatability by proposing alternative solutions to the ‘untranslatable’ metaphors as Dagut calls them. The metaphor translation solutions proposed by Van Den Broek (ibid.) include the substitution of a metaphor by a non- metaphorical word or expression. This solution is found to feature in other metaphor Translation Studies such as Rodriguez Marquez (2010) and Papadoudi (2010, 2014), and also features in the present study as will be seen later in Chapter 8.
Van den Broeck’s list of metaphor translation procedure is further extended by Newmark (1988) who focuses on providing a classification of metaphor types and procedures for metaphor translation from a prescriptive perspective. Newmark defines metaphor as a “resemblance, a common semantic area between two more or less similar things –the image
41
and the object” (1988:104). He refers to the concept or the mental image as the “image”, which he defines in terms of “the picture conjured up by the metaphor, which may be universal (a ‘glassy’ stare), cultural (a ‘beery’ face), or individual (a ‘papery’ cheek)” (emphasis added). Newmark (ibid. 105) refers to the linguistic metaphor as the “metaphor” “which may be one-word, or “extended over any stretch of language from collocation to the whole text”.
Newmark’s distinction between the “image” i.e. ‘the picture conjured by the metaphor’, which may be universal, cultural or individual, and the ‘object’ i.e. what is described or qualified by a metaphor’ (Newmark 1988:105), is similar to the distinction between the conceptual and the linguistic levels in the conceptual approach to metaphor. Newmark also raises the problem of the delimitation of the boundaries of the linguistic metaphor: what is a metaphor? Is it one word, multiple words or does it extend beyond? However, his view differs from the conceptual view in that he deems it necessary to go through the literal meaning in order to understand the metaphor which can be the basic meaning but does not go beyond. The identification of the basic meaning, however, is only to first step in the analysis of metaphors from a conceptual theory perspective.
Newmark distinguishes clearly between the concept and the linguistic expression but concentrates his attention on the linguistic level. He proposes seven types of metaphors: dead, stock, clichés, standard metaphors, adopted metaphors, recent metaphors and original metaphors. However, he does not provide a way to distinguish between these metaphor types. Some of these types overlap; for instance, there is no clear distinction between dead and stock metaphors or between recent and original metaphors.
Newmark also proposes different procedures to translate metaphors which are: 1. Reproducing the same image in the TL;
2. Replacing the image in the SL with a standard TL image which does not clash with the TL culture, what Newmark (1988) also calls “cultural equivalence”;
3. Translating metaphor by simile, retaining the image; 4. Translating metaphor (or simile) by simile plus sense; 5. Converting metaphor to sense;
6. Deletion, if the metaphor is redundant;
42
Procedures 4 and 7, which are a combination of two solutions, show how metaphor can be problematic in translation. The analysis of the A&A corpus as will be seen in Chapter 8, shows that combining two procedures to translate a metaphor is one of the strategies identified in the A&A corpus to render linguistic metaphors from English into Arabic. Newmark (1988:91) calls this procedure a “couplet” and defines it as a combination of two translation procedures (i.e. strategies) or more. He argues that this solution is “particularly common for cultural words if transference (loan) is combined with a functional or a cultural equivalent” (ibid.).
The couplet seems to be a pragmatic solution in order to transfer the metaphor and its functions into the TT and to attune the reader and help him/her to understand the metaphor, particularly if the metaphor is culturally-bound as will be seen later in Chapter 8.
Despite this detailed description of metaphor translation procedures, Newmark’s metaphor types/categories seem to be an unnecessary extension of the Van den Broeck’s categorization because ‘dead’, ‘clichés’ and ‘standard’ metaphors can all be classified as conventionalised metaphors in the sense that their meaning can be, more or less, found in general language dictionaries.
In addition, procedure 3 also presents some interest: by transforming the metaphor into a simile, the metaphor keeps its power as a conceptual and pervasive tool and becomes easier to grasp by the reader through the introduction of a simile device. This can be considered as a translation strategy where a metaphor signal is used in the TT as means of explicitation as seen in Section 3.4 and as will be discussed later in the analysis of the Arabic translation sub-corpus.
Furthermore, Newmark has raised an important issue which is metaphor identification. In this regard, he offers to use the truth condition principle to identify a metaphor. By the truth condition, Newmark proposes that “whenever a sentence is “grammatical” but does not appear to make sense, you have to test its apparently nonsensical element for a possible metaphorical meaning.” (1988: 106). Newmark’s “truth condition” is quite similar to the “incongruence principle” applied by the Pragglejaz group (Crisp et al., 2007) in their Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) to be discussed later in Chapter 5.
Newmark’s (19981) contribution to metaphor translation analysis is undeniable despite criticism as outlined above.
43
Other scholars such as Toury (1995) argue that the linguistic approaches described so far are all oriented towards the source text. He argues that a target text-oriented approach reveals other strategies for dealing with metaphors.
In Toury (1995)’s opinion, the source text-oriented approaches can be summarised as follows;
• metaphor into ‘same’ metaphor; • metaphor into ‘different’ metaphor;
• metaphor into non-metaphor, meaning the translation of a metaphor by a non- metaphor;
• metaphor into 0 metaphor which means suppression of the metaphor from the target text
In addition, by looking from a target text perspective, two other strategies can be added (Toury 1995: 83):
• non-metaphor into a metaphor • Nil into a metaphor.
In both cases, a metaphor occurs in the target text where no metaphor is used in the source text. The difference between the two cases is that in the latter case there is no linguistic motivation in the source text that may justify this addition.
Contrary to the previously mentioned studies where the choice of a metaphor translation strategy may be motivated by the nature/function of the metaphor (novel or conventional, for instance), Toury (1995:84) argues that the translation procedure adopted is justified by the norms prevailing in the target text rather than by the nature of metaphor in the source text in accordance with his framework of Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS):
[..] it seems reasonable to assume that the use of the metaphors in a target text is reduced, even so much as blocked on occasion, by certain target norms, and not by anything in the nature of the (source) metaphors, the texts they are incorporated in, or the discrepancy between the target and source languages [..] (Toury, 1995:84. Emphasis in the original)
Toury (ibid.) adds a new dimension to metaphor translation studies which is the study of metaphor from both perspectives: a source-text oriented perspective and a target-text oriented perspective. This approach allows the identification of a new aspect of metaphor translation, which is the translation of non-metaphors into metaphors. However, it seems
44
to be hard to find a concrete way to distinguish between the cases where the addition is motivated and the cases where it is not motivated. The target-text oriented perspective will be important for the analysis of the Arabic subcorpus as will be seen later in Chapter 8.
4.1.3 Conclusion
The different studies reviewed in this section point out the complexity of the translation of metaphors. This complexity is due to the differences in languages and cultures. Newmark (1988) provides a detailed description of the cultural differences that make of metaphor translation a problematic issue and raises methodological issues related to metaphor delimitation and identification. In contrast to the studies by Dagut and Van Den Broeck studies, Newmark distinguishes between the conceptual and the linguistic levels of a metaphor. However, he then focuses only on the linguistic level of the metaphor. These translation approaches to metaphor are characterised by the following:
a. a failure to provide a clear definition of what metaphor is and a methodology for metaphor identification;
b. a failure to provide an explanation as to why metaphor is pervasive not only in literary discourse but also in pragmatic texts and everyday language;
c. the studies discussed here focus on isolated metaphorical expressions without seeking any relationship between the metaphors that are used within the same context or text or any correlation with other metaphors that may reveal their connection at a higher level, which is that of thought and cognition.
This last point is addressed by Stienstra (1993: 2016) who criticises translation scholars for restricting their attention to individual metaphors from the point of view of translatability and untranslatability or the barriers that may hinder the transfer of the metaphors into the target text, rather than showing awareness of the role of metaphorical concepts in texts. This question about the role of metaphorical concepts is at the heart of the conceptual approach to metaphors that has brought metaphor to a more central position in thought in addition to its role in language. The following section provides a review of the main cognitive models of metaphor translation. The definition of the key concepts of the conceptual approach to metaphors is returned to with some detail in Chapter 5.
45