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The problem of translation of genuine metaphor

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INTRODUCTION

Metaphor is one of the most important features of a literary text, which provides image expresiveness, emotionality and stylistical features of author. Metaphor is organically related to poetic world perceprion. Many scholars are highly interested in pecularities of metaphor translation which functions in the literary text as still there are no strict rules of method for metaphor translation as it develops constantly.

The aim of this research is to examine pecularities of metaphor translation from English to Russian.

According to aim of the research the following problems are going to be solved:

1) Examination of methapor as a trope in studying stylistics (its components and classifications);

2) Examination of translational issues of genuine metaphors;

3) Examination of the role of equivalence in metaphor translation;

4) Investigation of methods for an adequate metaphor translations:

5) Analysis of Tolkien’s novel “The hobbit” and comparing its Russian translations.

In order to reach the aim the works of Russian scholars and literary works of Nabokov, Maugham and Tolkien and their Russian translations were used.

The given research consists of introduction, two chapters, conclusions and references.

Chapter 1. Metaphor as a branch of stylistics and a subject in theory of translation

Metaphor as a trope

Tropes are lexico-semantic stylistic devices based on a certain change or transposition of meaning, which results in creating an image.

That means a word acquires a figurative meaning or additional connotations in a particular context, which co-exist with the direct meaning.

There are a range of different tropes such as simile, metaphor (including personification and antonomasia), metonymy, synecdoche, allegory and epithet.

Simile aims at comparing two objects belonging to different classes of thing and creating an artistic image as a result. Sometimes it can be confused with comparison. However, comparison implies likeness between two objects belonging to the same class and it doesn’t result in vivid imagery. Thus:

“He looks like his father” is comparison, while

“He looks like a ghost” is simile.

According to Arnold “metaphor is a hidden simile which consists in applying the name of one object to another object” [Arnold 2002: 124].

Besides Arnold, various scholars present various definitions as follows:

“Metaphor denotes expressive renaming on the basis of similarity of two objects: the real object of speech and the one whose name is actually used” [Skrebnev 2003: 133].

“Metaphor is a relation between the dictionary and contextual logical meaning based on the affinity or similarity of two corresponding objects [Galperin 2010: 127]

Metaphor is based on simile but at the same time it has differences. The main features of metaphor are following:

1) Simile is always marked formally (with a help of conjunctions and prepositions as if, like, suffixes –like, -wise, special verbs resemble, remind of, seem, look like, and other expressions) while metaphor – never.

2) Simile keeps two objects apart and metaphor aim at complete identification and is more expressive and categorical. It provides a sort of stereoscopic or double vision.

e.g.: “He looks like a demon” (simile);

“He is a demon” (metaphor).

3) Metaphor consists in renaming an object and presupposes a more essential change of meaning.

4) Metaphor creates likeness/similarity/analogy between two concepts.

5) Metaphor possesses cognitive value. It is used to create new meanings in language.

e.g.: to grasp/see/get = to understand

Metaphor has a specific structure which components are:

-Tenor (theme of metaphor, content) – the concept denoted by metaphor.

-Vehicle(form) – the image used to denote the concept.

-The Ground (basis for comparison) – the property that helps us see the analogy between two objects.

According to its structure metaphor can be:

1) Simple metaphor is expressed by one word or phrase.

e.g.: “Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines” (William Shakespeare).

Simple metaphor can be expressed by noun, verbs (“the dust danced”), adjectives (“the human tide”) and adverbs (“the leaves fell sorrowfully”).

2) Extended (prolonged) metaphor is represented by a chain of simple metaphors creating one image and is actualized on the level of a sentence, several sentences, paragraph, chapter, etc.

e.g.: “This is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight. … The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and, when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour”(Francis Scott Fitzgerald).

According to degree ofunexpectedness metaphor can be:

1) Trite (hackneyed, “ready-made”) metaphor, which is commonly used in speech and sometimes fixed in dictionaries. It belongs to language-as-a-system.

e.g.: “mouth of river”, “seed of evil”, “leg of table”, “needle’s eye”, “bottle’s neck”, etc.

2) Genuine (original, individual) metaphor, which is unexpected, occasional, exists only in a certain context and requires some mental effort to be deciphered. It belongs to speech, language-in-action.

e.g.: “England is a dying animal in a zoo” (John Fowls).

The problem of translation of genuine metaphor

Trope availability in text requires the choice to the translator – either to reproduce the given construction in the translated text or to omit it and compensate it with other mode instead. This choice depends usually on pragmatic aims of translation. In many cases the aim of communication is to transfer some idea and figures of speech are considered to be an excess, a luxury which can be omitted. When an English “a skeleton in the family cupboard” is translated into Russian like “постыдная семейная тайна”, expressive means are undoubtedly lost but the meaning is preserved. In the literary text poetic or stylistic effect is equally important as the idea, especially when translator faces puns and extended metaphors. In such cases the loss of figures of speech can lead to the loss of sense, that is why the preservation of metaphorical mean tends to be very important.

In the theory of translation there are two types of metaphor are singled out: trite metaphor and genuine metaphor. Trite (or conventional) metaphors are frequently used and can be considered as idioms or phraseological units. Like idioms, Russian equivalents for such metaphors can be based on the same image:

1)“broken English” – “ломаный английский”

E.g.: “I could have telephoned but fearing my voice might go out of control and lapse into coy croaks of broken English” [Nabokov 2012: 217].

«Я мог бы позвонить, но, боясь, что потеряю власть над голосом и разражусь жеманным кваканием на ломаном английском языке» [Набоков 2015: 238].

2)“barking laugh” – “лающий смех”

E.g.: “Her lips were like large crimson polyps, and when she emitted her special barking laugh, she showed large dull teeth and pale gums” [Nabokov 2012: 207].

«Ее губы были как большие пунцовые слизни, и когда она разражалась своим характерным лающим смехом, то показывала крупные, тусклые зубы и бескровные десны» [Набоков, 2015: 228].

Translation of metaphor which is in Russian based on different but similar image is also possible:

1)“hot thunder of whisper” – “горячий гул шепота”

E.g.: “But for quite a while my mind could not separate into words the hot thunder of her whisper” [Nabokov 2012: 266].

«Но рассудок мой долго не мог разбить на слова жаркий гул ее шепота» [Набоков 2015: 291].

2) “as large as life” – “в натуральную величину (рост)”

E.g.: “I kept telling myself, as I wielded my brand-new large-as-life wife, that biologically this was the nearest I could get to Lolita” [Nabokov 2012: 149].

«Я все повторял себе, меж тем как орудовал моей только что сфабрикованной, в натуральный рост женой, что в биологическом смысле она собой представляет максимально доступное мне приближение к Лолите» [Набоков 2015: 165].

The transference of original, individual tropes that are created by the author’s imagination from English to Russian is more complex task. Such metaphors represent a part of author’s stylistics and are usually translated literally. However, some genuine images cannot be presented in Russian adequately and in this case translator has to search for an appropriate occasional adequacy, like in the following example:

“In order to break some pattern of fate in which I obscurely felt myself being enmeshed, I had decided — despite Lo's visible annoyance – to spend another night at Chestnut Court” [Nabokov 2012: 434].

The word pattern is usually translated into Russian like узор, рисунок and from this point of view pattern in Russian cannot be broken or enmeshed. In this case translator has to find some appropriate equivalent in Russian:

“Желая разорвать сеть судьбы, которая, как я смутно чувствовал, опутывала меня, я решил (несмотря на нескрываемую досаду Лолиты) провести лишнюю ночь в “Каштановых Коттеджах” [Набоков 2015: 482].

Thus, in the theory of translation the following modes of metaphor transferencecan be singled out:

1) Searching for imaginative analogy in the language of translation;

2) Creation of a verbal equivalent;

3) Descriptive translation;

4) Substitution of original image for a customary image in the language of translation.

However, in cognitive linguistics there is an absolutely different approach in understanding metaphor. It takes up a metaphor as a basic cogitative process, as a mode of world categorization and conceptualization. From this point of view metaphor is not only a meaning transference, but a structuring of one experience area (concept) in terms of another area. In this case the main role is given not to searching for translation adequacy of a source language but to searching for corresponding correlation of concepts in concept spheres of source and receiving cultures. In the conceptual sphere may be observed more similarities than in a language sphere. This is the commonness of concept spheres which provides translationability from one language to the other – translator comprehends the concept of the source language and then tries to find language means that more adequately convey the concept to translation.

Analysis of representation of the one concept in different languages allows discovering the national specific of language systems. A good example of such specific cultural concepts is untranslatable Russian word пошлый and his derivations (пошлость, пошляк). Nabokov examines this word with a delicate accuracy:

“The Russian language is able to express by means of one pitiless word the idea of a certain widespread defect for which the other three European languages I happen to know possess no special form. English words expressing several, although by no means all, aspects of poshlust are for instance: “cheap, sham, common, smutty, pink-and-blue, highfalutin, in bad taste”. All these however suggest merely certain false values for the detection of which no particular shrewdness is required. In fact, they tend, these words, to supply an obvious classification of values at a given period of human history: but what Russians call poshlust is beautifully timeless and so cleverly painted all over with protective tints that its presence (in a book, in a soul, in a institution, in a thousand other places) often escapes detection” [Nabokov 2001: 15].

Thus, some national concepts fundamentally cannot be expressed adequately in a language of the other culture. Every culture possesses a specific range of concepts that form a conceptual sphere of the nation and arrange a connected system. Metaphorical model combines two parts (two concepts) of this system by means of rethinking of aim-area relative to source-area. Obviously, without one of these parts (aim-area or source-area) in conceptual sphere of receiving culture, representation of original metaphor becomes impossible.

In the theory of conceptual metaphor there is another metaphor classification. Besides, conventional and genuine metaphors, there are structural metaphor, orientational metaphor and ontological metaphor as well. Each of these metaphor varieties requires different methods of translation.

Orientational metaphors are based on physical experience. In most cases such metaphors are translated literally. Specifically, in both English and Russian language cultures there are metaphorical models: more is up and less is down. That is why the following translation variants are possible:

1) “Her weekly allowance, paid to her under condition she fulfill her basic obligations, was twenty-one cents at the start of the Beardsley era – and went up to one dollar five before its end” [Nabokov 2012: 367].

«Ее недельное жалование, выплачиваемое ей при условии, что она будет исполнять трижды в сутки основные свои обязанности, было, в начале Бердслейской эры, двадцать один цент (к концу этой эры оно дошло до доллара и пяти центов)» [Набоков 2015: 406].

2) “I slowed down from a blind seventy to a purblind fifty” [Nabokov 2012: 224].

«Я перешел со слепой скорости в семьдесят миль в час на полуслепую в пятьдесят» [Набоков 2015: 247].

Ontological metaphorsare based on a presentation of some non-discrete substance in the form of a concrete substance. In translation of such metaphor the availability of corresponding concept in a receiving culture plays a great role – translator usually has to discover an equivalent concept which more or less resembles the notion in the source culture.

E.g.: the English metaphor mind is a container cannot be translated in Russian literally, because in Russian language there is no a one-word concept which correlates an English concept mind, which in different contexts may be understood in Russian either ум, разум or дух, душа. Moreover, the conceptual spheres don’t correlate:

“Now, in perusing what follows, the reader should bear in mind not only the general circuit as adumbrated above” [Nabokov 2012: 304].

«Просматривая следующие страницы, читатель должен считаться не только с общим маршрутом, намеченным выше» [Набоков 2015: 335].

In English it is possible to bear in mind some information, while in Russian this concept correlates with non-metaphorical concept считаться с чем-либо.

“Let's explore your mind” [Nabokov 2012: 329].

«Посмотрим, насколько вы сообразительны» [Набоков 2015: 363].

However, sometimes there are cases of total correlation between conceptual systems in both English and Russian languages:

“There was but one thing in my mind and pulse” [Nabokov 2012: 202].

«У меня было всего лишь одно на уме и в крови» [Набоков 2015: 222].

Structural metaphors correlate two concepts on conditions of structuring of one of these concepts in terms of the other one. Thus, translating such metaphors it is necessary to consider the identical mode of experience presentation in a receiving culture. In both Russian and European cultures there is a tradition to consider LIFE as a FRAGILE OBJECT, what makes the following translation possible:

“I leaf again and again through these miserable memories, and keep asking myself, was it then, in the glitter of that remote summer, that the rift in my life began” [Nabokov 2012: 16].

«Снова и снова перелистываю эти жалкие воспоминания и все допытываюсь у самого себя, не оттуда ли, не из блеска ли того далекого лета пошла трещина через всю мою жизнь» [Набоков 2015: 20].

"You are ruining my life and yours," I said quietly” [Nabokov 2012: 191].

“Ты разбиваешь и мою жизнь и свою”, – сказал я спокойно» [Набоков 2015: 210].

Thus, translating metaphorical units it is necessary to consider achievement in a cognitive linguistics in the area of correlation of concepts in different cultures, which will provide a more adequate translation.

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