Metaphor Translation as a Tool of Intercultural Understanding

Abstract

In her article "Metaphor Translation as a Tool of Intercultural Understanding" Ipshita Chanda takes up specific cases of metaphor translation as a methodological exercise towards understanding intercultural exchange. Chanda's study is based on a semiotic and linguistic understanding of metaphor as a signifying and cognitive device. When a metaphor is translated from one linguistic-literary field into another, the process of translation itself yields some specific operational steps for studying inter- and cross-cultural relations. Here, translation is not proposed as a framework but as practical method: the translation of metaphor becomes an exercise in strategy for the pedagogy of the comparative approach. Grounding the literary fields of source and target languages in the comparative study of cultures in which metaphors originate and are made to mean, Chanda argues that the methods used for the study of relations between literary fields may be extended to the study of cultural contact and exchange.