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A semiotic approach to metaphor translation

A corpus-based contrastive study of conceptual shifts in selected English and French wine tasting terms borrowed into Chinese

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Abstract
Metaphor serves as a powerful and frequently employed mechanism for term formation in specialized language, offering advantages such as conceptual accessibility, cognitive efficiency, and expressive richness by linking abstract notions to familiar experiential domains. However, while metaphor facilitates understanding within a given linguistic and cultural context, it can also pose significant challenges in cross-cultural communication, as metaphorical mappings may not be universally shared or may carry different connotations across languages. Using wine tasting terminology as a case study, this research examines the challenges of borrowing metaphor-based terms from English and French into Chinese and adopts a semiotic approach to assess the applicability, strengths, and limitations of calque translation for metaphorical terms. A trilingual corpus was compiled, consisting of professional wine reviews and books, to analyze semantic, pragmatic, and conceptual shifts in metaphor translation. Two distinct categories of metaphorical terms are analyzed: (1) inherently metaphorical terms, where the concept itself is expressed through metaphor, and (2) metaphorized terms, which acquire metaphorical meaning through extended usage in specialized discourse. As one of the few studies to apply Peircean semiotics to the translation of metaphorical wine terminology, this research provides a unique perspective on the role of semiotics in linguistic borrowing analysis, contributing to broader discussions on wine terminology standardization and cross-linguistic conceptualization.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Review of literature
  • 3.Research methodology
    • 3.1Corpus design and compilation
    • 3.2Operational definition and classification of metaphorical terms
    • 3.3Term identification and data extraction
    • 3.4Manual annotation and analytical categories
  • 4.Notes on the theory of Peircean semiotics used in this study
  • 5.Case study 1: Conceptual shifts in the lexical borrowing of inherently metaphorical terms into Chinese
  • 6.Case study 2: Conceptual shifts in the lexical borrowing of metaphorized terms into Chinese
  • 7.The semiotic foundation of effective lexical borrowing of metaphorical terms from one language into another
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Websites
  • References
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