Metaphorical Representations of the Biblical Concepts of Death and Resurrection When Translating in a Buddhist Context

Abstract

This article applies Lakoff and Johnson’s cognitive metaphor theory to the key terms of death and resurrection in the Scriptures and examines the translation of these terms into languages with a traditional Buddhist culture whose worldview is different from that of the Bible. The present analysis indicates that in the conceptual system of the biblical authors, the concept of death is metaphorically described as sleep while resurrection is pictured as waking up and standing up. However, in the Buddhist worldview the concept of the resurrection is absent and the concept of death is not always metaphorically extended as sleep. This article discusses the practical possibilities and limits of the representations of these metaphorical extensions in three Buddhist-context translation projects of the Institute for Bible Translation in Russia: Buryat, Kalmyk, and Tuvan. It also offers some suggestions about searching for their possible representations in the target language.