Understanding Metaphors in Language

• Metaphor's primary purpose is to describe something comprehensively, concisely, and complexly, surpassing literal language.
• Metaphors initially appear emotive and potentially deceitful.
• Metaphors establish similarities between objects without explicitly stating them, which can seem imprecise.
• Effective writers use metaphors to provide readers with a more accurate understanding of characters or situations and language.
• Single-word metaphors, when accepted as technical terms, can evolve into metonyms and become part of technical language, increasing accuracy.
• Metaphors are often viewed as mere ornamentation or poetic devices that imply resemblance.
• Linguists often assume that scientific texts contain literal language with occasional similes for cautious comparison.
• Emotive expressions heavily rely on metaphor, with figurative language influenced by psychological terms.
• Metaphors can sharpen language and provide insight into the world/mind, but should not merely exist for the sake of color.
• Words are symbols and metaphors/metonyms act as replacements for objects
• A larger symbol spans a collocation, clause, or sentence, differing from isolated words.
• Semantics is a metaphorical web.
• Metaphor is a translation. Dead metaphors are literal language for translation.
• Metaphor arises from observing resemblance between objects/processes.
• The image in language may be physical or based on connotations.
• Violence is used to identify objects/processes which produces an emotional effect.
• Repetition of metaphors diminishes the initial emotive impact/effect.
• Metaphors are anthropomorphic (personification) or reific (mental to physical), both of which strengthen emotion.
• Metaphors can be categorized into dead, cliché, stock, recent, and original types.

Elements of Metaphor

• Object: The item described by the metaphor, otherwise known as the "topic".
• Image: The item used to describe the object, otherwise known as the "vehicle".
• Sense: The point of similarity between the object and the image, which demonstrates how they are alike (the "tenor").
• Metaphor: The word(s) directly taken from the image.
• Metonym: A word-image stands in as a replacement for its object, possibly becoming a dead metaphor.

Types of Metaphors

• One-word metaphors: Ex. "a sunny girl"
• Complex metaphors: Idioms or proverbs, all the way up to entire poems. Ex. "to catch a fish."
• The image is the 'rooting up weeds'.
• The metaphor is 'rooting out'.
• The sense is to eliminate, with tremendous personal effort.

Transparent Dead Metaphors

• Type 1: Words such as 'reflect' or 'shine' retain both image and sense in other languages, like réfléchir and briller.
• Type 2: Object-denoting words resist figurative conversion, maintaining their denotative meaning. These are more precisely metonyms
• Examples include motorcycle parts, fin, frame, etc., that have replaced general terms.
• Technical metonyms are a 'trap' for the translator.

Non-Technical Dead Metaphors

• Consist of common words with concrete/figurative meanings such as head, foot, arm, etc.
• Prone to collocational traps when translating, such as "to the letter" which is "au pied de la lettre".
• They can be revived with context, creating polysemy. Ex. "large-scale" vs "high on the social scale".

Clichés

• Clichés are a blend of dead and stock metaphors.
• Examples include "filthy lucre".
• Consist of vogue terms overused such as 'parameter', 'strategy', and 'profile'.
• Translators can eliminate clichés in informative texts or 'socially operative' texts.
• Clichés should be retained in expressive texts, authoritative statements, regulations, etc.
• Resourceful translators render less weighty texts elegantly, reducing the "long arm of coincidence" to extremer Zufall.

Translating Stock Metaphors

• Stock metaphors can have cultural, universal, and subjective parts.
• Translators should identify possible universal concepts. Example is 'birth', which is 'awakening'.

Procedures for Translating Metaphor

• Reproduce the same image in the TL with appropriate frequency and register. This works well for single-word metaphors and depends on cultural overlap for complex metaphors.
• When senses are events/qualities, universality improves transferability.

Metonyms Transfer

• There must be "strong" cultural overlap or consensus for metonyms to transfer between languages. Ex. The "pen" or the "sword".

Similes Transfer

• Similes generally transfer easily into text. The context of sci-text must be culturally familiar to the TL reader.

Translation Considerations for Animal Abuse Terms

• Animal metaphors vary in translatability and connotations.
• Pigs are universally negative but dog or cat labels change too much culturally.
• Horse metaphors differ between English, French and German languages.

Replacement of the Image

• The translator can replace the SL image with a standard TL image that is culturally appropriate.
• Many complex metaphors are clichéd and moth-eaten.

Taboos

• Speech communities use euphemisms to protect speakers from taboos related to sacred/prohibited topics.
• Taboos are related to birth, sex, death and decay.
• Euphemisms are metaphors and their images are often replaced culturally, unless the translator informs the reader.

Translation by Simile

• Metaphor is translated by simile: Retains the image.
• Similes soften the shock of a metaphor.

Metaphor / Simile Conversion

• Metaphor or simile may be conveyed as simile plus sense, especially if it requires an expert and may be misunderstood.
• Glosses are more important than equivalence.

Metaphor Conversion to Sense

• Metaphor converted to a sense that matches the register.
• The sense is analyzed componentially in the conversion.

Deletion

• If the metaphor is redundant/otiose, the sense, plus the metaphor, can be deleted as long as text is not authoritative.

Combining Metaphor and Sense

• Image may be transferred to ensure it is understood.
• Translate literally, while including a gloss of the original meaning.

Translating Recent Metaphors/Neologisms

• Fashionable in the SL community
• General technical terms ('juggernauts')
• A translator may need to describe the object or add a translation label.

Translating Original Metaphors

• Modern translations into the TL.
• The translator is influenced by context, reader's commitment, and reader's knowledge.
• Metaphors may be universal.
• Cultural metaphors are challenging but not insoluble.
• When metaphors are predominantly cultural, the problem is not insoluble.
• Original Metaphors can have double meanings.

Universal Metaphors

• May be based on the human body, nature or weather.
• Freud noted that the sexual symbols of dreams could not be interpreted until the circumstances were known.

Original Metaphor

• Consists of a cultural and personal element.
• They are peculiar to the imagination.
• They can only be translated by primary meanings due to a lack of reference.

Translation of Metaphors

• Appears in newspapers, periodicals and textbooks
• Consists of jazz and pop, sport, finance, computer technology and advertising.
• The work of some outstanding journalists.
• They are abundant with recent and original metaphors, which is the main feature of imaginative writing.
• 'Soul', 'rock', 'funk', 'groovy' are commonly found in the jazz scene.
• Foreign medical texts remove metaphors, but similes are generally retained.

Slang

• There is no methodology of translating slang.
• A vast majority of slang and colloquial words are either metaphorical or have some marked phonaesthetic / formal peculiarities.
• The use of the slang describes the user.
• Transliteration can be chosen, leaving local color, or literal translation can be used when cultural concepts overlap.
• Italicized words for slang indicate the word is not in normal speech.

Conclusion

• Metaphor offers an attempt to cerner, delimit and define.
• Indicates a decoration to show ressemblance.
• Describes an attempt to produce an emotive effect.
• It is mainly concerned with the serious purpose of metaphor or metonym.
• Assess the status of the metaphor before translating it.
• Metaphor lies at the centre of translation theory, semantics and linguistics.