Abstract
Although in view of its importance and frequency in language use metaphor indubitably constitutes a pivotal issue in translation, it has hitherto received only random attention on the part of translation theorists. Presumably one of the main obstacles for a theory of translation to overcome is the intuitively subscribed and generally accepted of any single generalization about the translatability of metaphor. If however we accept that there is such a thing as a theoretical constituent level on which translation phenomena can be dealt with, we must also accept that it is the proper task of translation theory to make generalizations about such phenomena. To admit the inadequacy of generalizations about the translatability of metaphor is to admit that translation theory as a whole is an absurd undertaking, since it then should be incapable of accounting for the translation of one of the most frequent phenomena in language use. Even if such generalizations must necessarily fail to do justice to the great complexity of the factors determining the ontology of metaphors why certain metaphors are created and others not; why a metaphor that is strikingly effective in one language becomes peculiar or even unintelligible if transferred unchanged into another [...]; in short, why languages are anisomorphic metaphorically (Dagut, 1976: 32), it may content itself with the more modest task of laying bare some of the hidden mechanisms governing the translation of metaphors and their theoretic degree of translatability. In this paper it is my intention to make such specifications as seem necessary to provide a theoretical framework in which general statements about the translation of metaphors can be made.
Published Version
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