Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 13:1 (2014) ► pp.120–151

Foreign metaphors and Arabic translation

An empirical study in journalistic translation practice

| Lebanese University | American University of Science and Technology |
This paper attempts to bridge translation studies on metaphor with perspectives from cognitive and critical discourse studies. It provides a new contribution to the study of the interplay between language and politics by investigating the ideological motivations behind choices made by Arab journalists/translators in translating metaphors in reports of world events, in the Middle East in particular. The analytic approach adopted for the purpose of this study draws inspiration from cognitive linguistics, critical discourse studies, and descriptive translation studies. Through a comparative study of a corpus of news representations in Western and Middle Eastern sources, the study scrutinizes the role of metaphor in our perception of reality and interpretation of a news event. Based on an examination of the processing of metaphor in professional translations, the study concludes that metaphors can be classified into two main types in terms of media translation: the cultural type and the ideological type and that each of these is approached differently by translators. The generalized findings concerning these two types of translational patterns are supported by input from Arabic-speaking university-level students of translation studies, in the form of parallel translations by the students and notes on their subsequent classroom discussion.
Keywords: cognitive linguistics, critical discourse studies, journalistic translation, metaphor, political discourse, pragmatics, translation studies
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The data
  • 3.Methods of analysis
    • 3.1The cognitive linguistics basis
    • 3.2Critical discourse analysis: A pragmatic approach
      • 3.2.1Face wants and politeness
      • 3.2.2Presuppositions
      • 3.2.3Implicatures
    • 3.3Metaphor and translation methods: A prescriptive or descriptive approach?
  • 4.Metaphor and the contextual constraints in translation
    • 4.1The dominant political stance of the media outlet and political relations with others
    • 4.2The audience’s expectations
    • 4.3The cultural constraint
    • 4.4The purpose of the translation and editorial control
  • 5.Case studies
    • 5.1The cultural metaphor
    • 5.2The ideological metaphor
  • 6.Findings on the metaphor and translation methods
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
Published online: 15 May 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.13.1.06baz
References (39)
References
Al-Jabiri, Mohammad. 1991. Al-Turath wa AlHadatha. Beirut and Casablanca: The Arab Cultural Centre.Google Scholar
Austin, John Langshaw. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Bazzi, Samia. 2009. Arab News and Conflict: A Multidisciplinary Discourse Study. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dickins, James, Sandor Hervey, and Ian Higgins. 2002. Thinking Arabic Translation: A Course in Translation Method: Arabic to English. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 2001. Language and Power. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Gentner, Dedre, and Brian Bowdle. 2008. “Metaphor as Structure-mapping.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, ed. by Raymond W. Gibbs Jr, 109–128. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goatly, Andrew. 2007. Washing the Brain: Metaphor and Hidden Ideology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grice, H. Paul. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics Vol.3: Speech Acts, ed. by Peter Cole, and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Gutt, Ernst-August. 2000. Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. 1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Hodge, Robert, and Gunther Kress. 1993. Language as Ideology (2nd edition). London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Holmes, James. 2000. “The Name and Nature of Translation Studies.” In The Translation Studies Reader, ed. by Lawrence Venuti, 172–185. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Koller, Werner. 1979. Einfuhrung in die Ubersetzungswissenschaft. Heidelberg: Quelle and Meyer.Google Scholar
Kövecses, Zoltan. 2010. Metaphor: A Practical Introduction (2nd edition). Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we Live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Monti, Enrico. 2009. “Translating the Metaphors we Live by.” European Journal of English Studies 13 (2): 207–221. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Musolff, Andreas. 2004. Metaphor and Political Discourse: Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. Metaphor, Nation and the Holocaust: The Concept of the Body Politic. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Newmark, Peter. 1981. Approaches to Translation. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
. 1988. A Textbook of Translation. London: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
. 1991. About Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Nida, Eugene. 1964. Toward a Science of Translating: With Special Reference to Principles and Procedures Involved in Bible Translating. Leiden, Holland: Brill.Google Scholar
Samaniego Fernandez, Eva. 2011. “Translation Studies and the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor.” Review of Cognitive Linguistics 9 (1): 262–279. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Saygin, A. Pinar. 2001. “Processing Figurative Language in a Multi-lingual Task: Translation, Transfer and Metaphor.” In Proceedings of Corpus-Based and Processing Approaches to Figurative Language Workshop. Lancaster University.
Schäffner, Christina. 2004. “Metaphor and Translation: Some Implications of a Cognitive Approach.” Journal of Pragmatics 36 (7): 1253–1269. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Searle, John Rogers. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simpson, Paul. 1993. Language, Ideology and Point of View. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Snell-Hornby, Mary. 1988. Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 2008. “A Deflationary Account of Metaphors.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, ed. by Raymond W. Gibbs Jr, 84–105. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stienstra, Nelly. 1993. YHWH is the Husband of his People. Analysis of a Biblical Metaphor with Special Reference to Translation. Kampen: Kok Pharos.Google Scholar
Toury, Gideon. 2000. “The Nature and Role of Norms in Translation.” In The Translation Studies Reader, ed. by Lawrence Venuti, 198–211. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Van Den Broeck, Raymond. 1981. “The Limits of Translatability Exemplified by Metaphor Translation.” Poetics Today 21: 73–87. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Dijk, Teun A. 1998. Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vermeer, Hans J. 1996. A Skopos Theory of Translation: Some Arguments for and Against. Heidelberg: TEXTconTEXT Verlag.Google Scholar
. 2000. “Skopos and Commission in Translational Action.” In Translation Studies Reader, ed. by Lawrence Venuti, 221–232. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
White, Roger. 1996. The Structure of Metaphor: The Way the Language of Metaphor Works. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Yule, George. 1996. The Study of Language. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Cited by (18)

Cited by 18 other publications

Bazzi, Samia
2024. How Is a Failed State Perceived by Its Citizenry? A Study of the Metaphors that Reveal These Perceptions. In Language in a Failed State, ► pp. 107 ff. DOI logo
Valdeón, Roberto A. & Saihong Li
2024. Political discourse translation in contemporary Chinese and western contents. The Translator ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Božović, Petar
2023. How should metaphors be rendered in audiovisual translation?. Translation and Interpreting Studies 18:3 ► pp. 471 ff. DOI logo
Wu, Yang
2023. The fight metaphor in translation: From patriotism to pragmatism. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies DOI logo
ŞEN BARTAN, Özgür & Ufuk ÇELEBİOĞLU
2023. Türkçe-Türk İşaret Dili görsel-işitsel çeviride metafor çeviri stratejileri. RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi :37 ► pp. 1447 ff. DOI logo
Khalifah, Lama & Aseel Zibin
2022. Arabic-English metaphor translation from a cognitive linguistic perspective. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation 68:6 ► pp. 860 ff. DOI logo
Liu, Yufeng & Dechao Li
2022. Metaphor Translation as Reframing: Chinese Versus Western Stance Mediation in COVID-19 News Reports. In Translation and Interpreting in the Age of COVID-19 [Corpora and Intercultural Studies, 9], ► pp. 13 ff. DOI logo
Liu, Yufeng & Dechao Li
2022. The US-China battle over Coronavirus in the news media: Metaphor transfer as a representation of stance mediation. Discourse & Society 33:4 ► pp. 456 ff. DOI logo
Wright, Alicia V.
2022. On the [translated] record: Journalistic translation and creative agency in India’s multilingual reporting. Journalism 23:7 ► pp. 1449 ff. DOI logo
Ping, Yuan
2021. Towards two decades of journalistic translation research (2000-2019): a corpus-based bibliometric study of the Translation Studies Bibliography. Meta 66:2 ► pp. 406 ff. DOI logo
Ramírez Almansa, Isidoro
2021. Análisis contrastivo (alemán-español) para la traducción del periodismo especializado en ciencia: las noticias de divulgación científica sobre coronavirus. Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción 14:1 ► pp. 240 ff. DOI logo
Karin Ryding & David Wilmsen
2021. The Cambridge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics, DOI logo
Zaki, Mai, David Wilmsen & Dana Abdulrahim
2021. The Utility of Arabic Corpus Linguistics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics, ► pp. 473 ff. DOI logo
Zanettin, Federico
2021. News Media Translation, DOI logo
Boéri, Julie & Ashraf Fattah
2020. Manipulation of translation in hard news reporting on the Gulf crisis: combining narrative and appraisal. Meta 65:1 ► pp. 73 ff. DOI logo
Randour, François, Julien Perrez & Min Reuchamps
2020. Twenty years of research on political discourse: A systematic review and directions for future research. Discourse & Society 31:4 ► pp. 428 ff. DOI logo
Riggs, Ashley
2020. The role of stylistic features in constructing representations of Muslims and France in English online news about terrorism in France. Perspectives 28:3 ► pp. 357 ff. DOI logo
Valdeón, Roberto A.
2015. Fifteen years of journalistic translation research and more. Perspectives 23:4 ► pp. 634 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.