Intrageneric and intergeneric variation in conceptual metaphor translation : a case study

Abstract EN

This paper examines the translation of English conceptual metaphors into Arabic in two genres: argumentative political discourse and fictional literary discourse.

The objective is to explore intrageneric and intergeneric variation in translation procedure use from a quantitative and qualitative perspective.

The textual data consists of 100 excerpts drawn from the English source text and their 100 counterpart excerpts from the Arabic translation.

The results show both descriptively and inferentially significant intrageneric variation in the employment of translation procedures in the two genres.

Intergenerically, however, the chi-square test reveals statistical significance only for 'replacing source language metaphor with target language metaphor' although descriptive frequency significance is readily observable for 'reproducing metaphor in target text' and 'deleting metaphor'.

The only procedure variation lacking both descriptive and statistical significance is 'converting metaphor to primary sense', which is used with similar frequency in both texts.

The qualitative analysis shows that the two translators' implementation of translation procedures is successful in some cases but seriously flawed in others.

It is concluded that conceptual metaphors are constitutive in both genres, but more so in the literary one, so the translator needs to exert every effort to account for them appropriately.