Translating Metaphor in Economic Newspaper Articles: a Case Study of the Translation of Conceptual and Linguistic Metaphors from English into Arabic

Abstract

This research investigates metaphor conceptualization in economic articles collected from the Financial Times and their Arabic translations in Al-Iqtissadia newspaper. In this study, a number of works has been adopted as theoretical frameworks: the conceptual theory or the cognitive linguistic view of metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1980), (Kövecses 2002); the critical metaphor analysis (Charteris-Black 2004, 2005); and the metaphor identification procedure (Pragglejaz Group 2007). The analysis of the source texts identifies twenty-three different source domains mapped onto the domain of economics; for example, living organism, war/conflict, physical health/illness, weather, music, air, disaster and others. A total of 341 metaphorical expressions are found to be divided differently among domains where the living organism comes first with the highest number of metaphors, and music comes last by only two metaphors.

. In fact, such investigation is significant for the advancement of knowledge in this area due to the scarce research on metaphor translation from English into Arabic and the increasing interest in the conceptual theory of metaphor among linguists and

translation scholars.

This research attempts to identify assorted types of source domains and conceptual metaphors used in the English data and compare their frequency to those in the Arabic translations which appear to have fewer metaphors. The linguistic metaphors used in the source texts to represent each source domain and/or conceptual mapping have also been investigated. Besides, this study inspects the ways conceptual and linguistic metaphors function in English economic articles and the message they carry to describe the economic situation. As for the Arabic data, the thesis examines what source domains have been shifted in the translation into Arabic, and to what extent the translation shifts have affected the communicativeness of the translation. Other areas related to the translatability of metaphor into Arabic, cross-cultural and linguistic differences have been highlighted too.

The study looks at points of similarities and differences in rendering conceptual metaphors into Arabic bearing in mind the linguistic, semantic and cultural differences between both languages. This involves examining whether the metaphorical expressions are maintained, paraphrased, illustrated or omitted in the target texts. Investigations show metaphorical language as a significant feature of English economic texts. However, the patterns of using metaphorical language in Arabic economic texts are found to be different. As for metaphor translation, there is no one strategy followed and it heavily depends on translators, as the data analysis reveals. By producing a new typology of metaphor based on examples from both languages, this research has attempted to theorize the translatability of metaphor from English into Arabic.