Translating anthropomorphic metaphors of war: an ecolinguistic approach

Abstract

This paper explores the formation of the anthropomorphic image of war in German and Ukrainian, highlighting the primary associations connected with the concept "war", revealing the influence of mass media on the deeply rooted patterns of anthropomorphic metaphor and discussing semantic aspects of its translation. The data was derived from the German and Ukrainian mass media (2014-2021) and verified within the framework of the sociolinguistic experiment, word association test to investigate the conceptualisation of war by the speakers of both languages in order to show that the choice of equivalents while translating publications about war should correspond to the socio-cultural dimension of a particular speech community, maintaining the ecolinguistic balance. Fifty respondents (25 German-speaking and 25 Ukrainian-speaking) aged from 18 to 50 (and above) were questioned, forming the focus-group for the pilot survey. The semantic and contextual analysis of the media publications, the conducted survey explicated that the main conceptual metaphorical and metaphtonymical patterns forming the anthropomorphic representation of war are used to revise the main principles of intercultural relations and proclaim the new age of the posthuman ethics underlining the inconsistency of war for the human nature. It was found out that the anthropomorphic metaphor is a means of media influence awaking the ecolinguistic consciousness, changing the translator's role to that of a mediator and peacemaker. Differences in the conceptualisation of war in German and Ukrainian can provoke misunderstanding or an inevitable semantic loss while translating anthropomorphic metaphors.