Aspects of the problems of translating metaphor, with special reference to modern Arabic poetry

Arabic language;

Obeidat, Hisham T. B. ; Hervey, Sandor ; Hervey, Sandor

University:The University of St Andrews

Department:Modern Languages (School of)

关键词: Arabic language;   

Others  :  https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10023/2919/HishamTBObeidatPhDThesis.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

来源: DR-NTU

【 摘 要 】

This thesis examines a crucial area in the translation of poetic discourse, thetranslatability of modern Arabic metaphor into English. Two main questionsare addressed. Firstly, what makes a particular metaphor easy to translate?Secondly, what makes another metaphor difficult or even impossible totranslate?The thesis consists of two parts, theory and data analysis. The first part,theory, contains five chapters. In chapter 1 general theories of metaphor arediscussed; interaction, imagination and experientialist theory. In chapter 2poetic metaphor is examined; its interpretation, its aesthetic values, the partplayed by the imagination in processing metaphor, the importance of culturalknowledge and the problems of translation. In chapter 3 the metonymymetaphorrelationship is assessed, and in chapter 4 the notion of deadmetaphor is examined. In chapter 5, light is shed on the use of poeticmetaphor in the Arab media and in particular on its use as an effective deviceto persuade the audience to accept the current peace discourse in the MiddleEast.Part 2, data analysis, also consists of five chapters of which chapter 6 is theintroduction to the data analysis, and links the two parts of the thesistogether. Chapters 7 to 10 concern the translation of metaphor in particularcategories of poetry: in chapter 7 the emphasis is on autobiographical poetry(Ghäzi al-Ghusaybi : "In the Grip of My Fifties" and "Making Me aGrandfather"). In chapter 8 the focus is on the poetry of exile (Fadwä Tüqän:"Ruqayya" and "The Call of the Land"). In chapter 9 nationalist poetry isdiscusses (Fadwä Tüqan: "My Sad City" and "Hamza"), while in chapter 10socio-political poetry is considered (Salah `Abd al-Sabür : "Sadness").The findings of this research may be summarised as follows: the translationof Arabic poetic metaphor into English requires most importantly therecreation of a similar cultural experience in the TL. The data analysis showsthat, in certain cases, it is easy to restructure the ST metaphoric experiencewith the same experience in the TL. On numerous occasions, however, the SLmetaphoric experience has to be rendered by a different metaphor exhibitinga similar, or parallel, experience. Lastly, the data also demonstrate to thereader how, in certain contexts, the ST metaphor is untranslatable, simplybecause the host language cannot express satisfactorily the ST thought in thesame or a similar way.