Literary translation and conceptual metaphors: From movement to performance

ABSTRACT

Literary translators and translation, when noticed at all, have a poor public image inconsistent with the evidence of skill and effort shown in translators’ essays, postscripts and interviews, and with the respect shown to literary translation practice in translation studies in general. This article suggests that much of this negativity results from the entailments, or logical implications, of the dominant conceptual metaphors of translation: movement and replacement. Conceptual metaphors powerfully shape perceptions and expectations, but unlike consciously applied metaphors their effects go largely unnoticed. By comparing the current dominant metaphors of translation to an alternative of “translation as performance” we can see that many of the common concepts of translation are entailments of metaphor rather than intrinsic features of translation. The performance metaphor is used as a contrast because it has very different entailments, thus highlighting the effects of the current metaphors and also providing a possible alternative for translators and students of translation.

KEYWORDS:

• Metaphor
• conceptual metaphor
• performance
• translation

Note on contributor

Dominic Cheetham is a lecturer at Sophia University, Tokyo, where he teaches and researches children’s literature and translation.