Cover not available
Article published In:
Target
Vol. 14:1 (2002) ► pp.43–73

Translation and ‘similarity-creating metaphors’ in specialised languages

| Universidad de Valladolid (Spain)
| Universidad de Valladolid (Spain)

This corpus-based research deals with the translation of metaphor in specialised texts. In these texts, metaphor is both a cognitive tool and aesthetic device. Some metaphors, particularly those which create a new similarity, seem to develop into technical terms, and this can cause translation problems. The study focuses on metaphors for ‘inflation’ in English economics texts, and their translation into Spanish. The translation strategies are analysed and their results assessed.

Keywords: English, Spanish, cognitivism, metaphor, terminology, technical translation, metaphor translation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Metaphor in specialised texts
  • 3.Metaphor in economics
  • 4.Data and methodology
  • 5.Results and discussion
    • 5.1Metaphorical scenarios conceptualising the term ‘inflation’
    • 5.2Reactions of the informants
    • 5.3The translation of metaphors
    • 5.4Proposals for the translation of metaphor
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 January 2003
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.14.1.03fue
References
Bies, Werner
1996 “Thinking with the help of images: On the metaphors of knowledge organisations”. Knowledge organisation 23:1. 3–8. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Mona
1998 “Réexplorer la langue de la traduction: une approche par corpus”. Meta 431. 480–485.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Broeck, Raymond van den
1981 “The limits of translatability as exemplified by metaphor translation”. Poetics today 2:4. 73–87.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cabré Castellví, María Teresa
1999 La terminología: representación y comunicación. Elementos para una teoría de base comunicativa y otros artículos. Barcelona: Institut Universitari de Lingüística Aplicada, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Colston, Herbert L.
1999 Review of Mio and Katz 1996 . Metaphor and symbol 14:1. 77–80.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deignan, Alice
1999 “Linguistic metaphors and collocation in nonliterary corpus data”. Metaphor and symbol 14:1. 19–36.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Divasson, Lourdes, R. Rodríguez and J. Hernández
1996 “Negotiation competence and the non-native speaker”. Gerhard Budin, ed. Multilingualism in specialist communication. Vienna: IITF 1996 167–169.Google Scholar
Dobrzyn´ ska, Teresa
1995 “Translating metaphor: Problems of meaning”. Journal of pragmatics 241. 595–604.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gramm, W.S.
1996 “Economic metaphors: Ideology, rhetoric, and theory”. Mio and Katz 1996 : 147–170.Google Scholar
Felber, Helmut
1984 Terminology manual. Vienna: Infoterm.Google Scholar
Fuertes Olivera, Pedro A.
1998 “Metaphor and translation: A case study in the field of Economics”. Purificación Fernández Nistal and Jose María Bravo Gozalo, eds. La Traducción: Orientaciones Lingüísticas y Culturales. Valladolid: Servicio de Apoyo a la Enseñanza 1998 79–95.Google Scholar
Henderson, Willie
1982 “Metaphor in economics”. Economics 18:4. 147–153.Google Scholar
Henderson, Willie, Tony Dudley-Evans and Roger Backhouse
eds. 1993 Economics and language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
House, Juliane
1977 A model for translation quality assessment. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
Indurkhya, Bipin
1992 Metaphor and cognition. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
ISO/TC 37/SC 1/CD 704.2 N 133 95 EN
1995 Terminology work—Principles and methods.Google Scholar
Knowles, Frank
1996 “Lexicographical aspects of health metaphor in financial text”. Martin Gellerstam et al., eds. EURALEX ’96 Proceedings I-II. 789–796.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George
1987 Women, fire and dangerous things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1993 “How metaphor structures dreams: The theory of conceptual metaphor applied to dream analysis”. ‹[URL]›
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson
1980 Metaphors we live by. Chicago: The Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Laviosa, Sara
1998 “The corpus-based approach: A new paradigm in Translation Studies”. Meta 431. 474–479.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mason, Mary
1990 “Dancing on air: Analysis of a passage from an economic textbook”. Tony Dudley-Evans and Willie Henderson, eds. The language of economics: The analysis of economics discourse. London: Modern Language Publications 1990 16–28.Google Scholar
McCloskey, Donald
1983 “The rhetoric of economics”. Journal of economic literature 311. 434–461.Google Scholar
1985 The rhetoric of economics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Meyer, Ingrid, Victoria Zaluski and Kristen Mackintosh
1997 “Metaphorical internet terms: A conceptual and structural analysis”. Terminology 4:1. 1–33.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mio, Jeffrey S. and Albert N. Katz
eds. 1996 Metaphor: Implications and applications. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Montero-Martinez, Silvia, Pedro A. Fuertes-Olivera and Mercedes García de Quesada
2001 “The translator as ‘language planner’: Syntactic calquing in an English – Spanish translation of Chemical Engineering”. Meta 46:4. 687–698.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Newmark, Peter
1988 Aproaches to translation. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Nord, Christiane
1991 Text analysis in translation. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Ortony, Andrew
ed. 1993 Metaphor and thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [2nd ed.]   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pavel, Sylvia
1993 “Neology and phraseology as terminology-in-the-making”. Henning B. Sonneveld and Kurt L. Loening, eds. Terminology: Applications in interdisciplinary communication. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins 1993 21–34.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sager, Juan C.
1997 “Term formation”. Susan Ellen Wright and Gerhard Budin, eds. Handbook of terminology management I1. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins 1997 24–41.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Temmerman, Rita
2000 Towards new ways of terminology description: The sociocognitive approach. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walter, Beate
1996 “A comparison of English language text forms from the specialist fields of History and Computer Science”. Gerhard Budin, ed. Multilingualism in specialist communication. Vienna: IITF 1996 359–373.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 7 other publications

Castaño, Emilia, Isabel Verdaguer, Natalia Judith Laso & Aaron Ventura
2014. Economy is a living organism. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics 27:2 ► pp. 323 ff. DOI logo
Fuertes-Olivera, Pedro A & Sandro Nielsen
2014. 10. The dynamics of accounting terms in a globalized environment. In Dynamics and Terminology [Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice, 16], ► pp. 215 ff. DOI logo
Fuertes-Olivera, Pedro A. & Susana Gómez-Martı́nez
2004. Empirical assessment of some learning factors affecting Spanish students of business English. English for Specific Purposes 23:2 ► pp. 163 ff. DOI logo
Ghanooni, Ali Reza
2014. A cross-cultural study of metaphoric imagery in Shakespeare’s Macbeth . Translation and Interpreting Studies 9:2 ► pp. 239 ff. DOI logo
Heidari, Adeleh & Azizollah Dabaghi
2015. Cross-cultural Metaphor Awareness as a Key component in Intercultural Communication Competence. Journal of Intercultural Communication 15:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Károly, Krisztina
2022. Translating Academic Texts. In The Cambridge Handbook of Translation, ► pp. 340 ff. DOI logo
Musacchio, Maria Teresa
2011. Metaphors and Metaphor-Like Processes Across Languages: Notes on English and Italian Language of Economics. In Affective Computing and Sentiment Analysis [Text, Speech and Language Technology, 45], ► pp. 79 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 april 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.