Abstract
Metaphors play an important role in conveying meaning not only in literary texts but also in scientific genres. Although there have been many translation studies on metaphor in literary texts, studies on metaphor translation in scientific settings seem to have been overlooked and received less attention. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the strategies used in translating scientific metaphors from English to Arabic by Yemeni senior translation students in three universities. This was achieved by using a translation test consisting of (33) metaphors selected from various sources based on Lakoff and Johnsen’s (1980; 2003) classification of metaphor. The test was given to a sample of 91 students who were randomly selected. 72 participants completed the test. Data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results showed that eight strategies, adapted from Alshunnag (2016), were used. The highly frequent strategy was the literal strategy and the least frequent was the explication strategy. The use of literal strategy indicated the difficulty of finding a metaphorical expression of a different type for the English metaphors in Arabic which might be due to the limited time available for translation and lack of knowledge of the metaphorical structure in both the source and target languages. It was recommended, therefore, that more comparative studies should be done to help improve translation training offered to students who should also be provided with training sessions which are more conducive to learning.
Highlights
Translating metaphors from one language to another is a challenging task for translators due to certain reasons including linguistic and cultural dissimilarities between the source and the target language
The use of literal strategy indicated the difficulty of finding a metaphorical expression of a different type for the English metaphors in Arabic which might be due to the limited time available for translation and lack of knowledge of the metaphorical structure in both the source and target languages
The participants tended to use the first strategy which is rendering the metaphorical expression into a parallel metaphorical expression with its literal forms, explication, elaboration and rendering the metaphor into the same conceptual metaphor but with different metaphorical expressions
Summary
Translating metaphors from one language to another is a challenging task for translators due to certain reasons including linguistic and cultural dissimilarities between the source and the target language. These challenges lie in the fact that metaphors contain both speakers’ meaning and word or sentence meaning (Bell, 1991; Ortony, 1993; Mohammed, 2011) and cultural meaning & 2003; Alshunnag, 2016) This view allowed researchers to contribute to translation studies by investigating metaphor in literary texts. According to Bleakley (2017), metaphors are used in literary texts and in scientific texts
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