Translating metaphoric expressions : translating culture

Abstract EN

This paper is based on the conclusion that metaphoric expressions are conceptual.

Their function is not merely easthetic or related exclusively to literary texts.

Metaphoric expressions, be them metaphors, simile, imageable idioms including proverbs are expressive of man’s experiences within a certain social /cultural reality.

And these experiences are expressed by language being “a part of reality, a shaper of reality and metaphor for reality” (Haliday : 1999).

The reality of a native speaker (English and Arabic in the Iraqi society for the purpose of this paper) is permeated with metaphoric expressions as such that there is “a stock of metaphors” the community of the native speaker lives and are representative of his experiences (Kramsch : 1993).

The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to present an analytical view into the translatability of metaphoric expressions being vitally important in the process of meaning-making.

One conclusion of this paper is that correspondent experiences produced by a domestic culture and a foreign culture should make the process of translating them possible and the possibility of getting the nearest possible equivalent wider.