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Translating metaphors that function as characterisation technique in narrative fiction
Abstract
If the interdependence of the intratextual components of narrative texts is not taken into account in the translation of metaphorical expressions, the target text characters can become deviant mutants of the characters in the source text. This has important implications for the translated text as such and for the evaluation of the translated novel as a literary work of art.
This contribution explores the translation of anthropomorphic metaphors via a contrastive analysis of La madre, by the Sardinian Nobel Laureate in Literature Grazia Deledda, and its 1922 translation (The Mother) by Mary Steegman. It will be argued that the target readers’ perception of the symbolic relationship between landscape and cultural identity, which Deledda presents metaphorically through the use of anthropomorphism, can be reshaped by the translator’s interpretation. To explore the patterns that reveal the translator’s approach to anthropomorphic metaphors, the study will be based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), notably Prandi’s distinction and theory on metaphor translation (2019), and ecostylistics.
Conventional research methods used in the social sciences or in the humanities fall short when applied to research in translation studies, which requires an interdisciplinary approach to comparative text analysis. This paper aims to fill this gap, providing a useful synthesis of theoretical and analytical research frameworks in descriptive translation in South Africa.
Culture poses problems in literary translation, and the mistranslation of culture-specific terms can render narrative elements such as characterisation, unacceptable to the target readership. The aim of this paper is to investigate the strategies that C.L.S. Nyembezi used to translate aspects of culture in Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country into Zulu as Lafa Elihle Kakhulu. A cultural model for translation, used within the descriptive translation studies paradigm, is adopted in order to conduct a comparative analysis of proper names, idiomatic expressions, figurative speech and aspects of contemporary life.
This paper argues for the necessity of a textual (i.e. global) rather than a merely syntactical (i.e. local) analysis of interaction processes in poetic metaphor (i.e. metaphorical expressions within poetic texts). It is maintained that metaphorical language in poetic texts is typically characterized by a high degree of detailed specification not accounted for in interaction views of metaphor dealing with local considerations only in an identification and interpretation of isolated metaphorical sentences. Its textual specificity rather than its syntactic incompatibility ultimately determines the interpretation (and to a lesser extent the identification) of any metaphorical expression within a poetic text. In order to capture the complex nature of interaction in poetic metaphor, current terminology is redefined, local interpretative procedures modified and extended and global interaction strategies developed. Both local interpretitive procedures and global interaction strategies, then, direct the complex interactional processes of, for instance, the global interaction between various types of textually specified tenors and vehicles and their modifying focus-expressions. It follows then that any local metaphorical unit may only be textually clarified in a global consideration of its relation to other local metaphorical expressions in the poetic text.
1. Introduction 2. Story: events 3. Story: characters 4. Text: time 5. Text: characterization 6. Text: focalization 7. Narration: levels and voices 8. Narration: speech representation 9. The text and its reading 10. Conclusion 11. Towards...:afterthoughts, almost twenty years later
Examines the problem of metaphor translation and concludes it must be viewed as two separate problems--the problem with metaphor and the problem with translation. (EKN)
Word-processed copy. Thesis (M.A.)--Universiteit van Suid-Afrika, 1990. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 204-210).
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