Metaphor in Translation: Cognitive Perspectives on Omar Khayyam’s Poetry as Rendered into English and Kurdish

Abstract

As cognitive linguistics puts it, metaphor as a cognitive phenomenon can not be relegated to linguistic expression. Therefore, in order to analyze metaphor in translation, cognitive translation hypothesis investigates its translatability and metaphorical equivalence at the conceptual level. However, in such case, the conceptual metaphor is dealt with without considering its significant relationship to the cultural models. Based on Cienki’s theory (1999) postulating that the relation of the conceptual metaphor to the cultural model is similar to that of a profile to a base, and that the possibility of the interpretation and production of the conceptual metaphor depends on the cultural model, the present research reinvestigates the cognitive translation hypothesis from this perspective. The research findings reveal that translators have mostly been successful in translating metaphors dependent on shared cultural models, however, have failed to recreate metaphors dependent on non-shared cultural models. Accordingly, same mapping condition and different mapping condition are strongly dependent on the relationship between metaphors and cultural models. Thus SMC and DMC should be redefined in relation to cultural model.