Descriptive Translating of Idiomatic and Set Expressions
The meaning of a considerable number of idiomatic as well as stable/set expressions can be rendered through explication only, i.e., in a descriptive way. Depending on the complexity of meaning contained in the source-language idiom, it can be expressed in the target language in some ways: 1) by a single word: out of a clear blue.of the sky раптом, зненацька; to pall and peel (to peel and pall) грабувати/оббирати; poor fish йолоп, бевзь, нікчема; red blood мужність, відвага, хоробрість; to sell smoke піддурювати, підманювати; to seta-limit to smth. обмежувати, стримувати; to set at large звільнювати (випустити на волю); to go aloft померти; 2) undoubtedly the most frequent is rendering the sense of idiomatic/phraseological expressions with the help of free combinations of words as in: to run amock нападати зненацька на першу-ліпшу людину; school miss школярка, соромлива, недосвідчена дівчина; to sell someone short недооцінювати когось; to sham Abraham удавати з себе хворого (прикидатися хворим); to shoot Niagara вдаватися до ризикованих дій, short odds майже рівні шанси; to sit above the salt сидіти на почесному місці; the sixty-four dollar question найважливіше, вирішальне питання; a stitch in time своєчасний захід/вчинок, своєчасна дія; to go to rack (wrack) ruin загинути; зовсім розоритися; to go west/West пропасти, зникнути, зійти зі сцени (переносно); 3) when the lexical meaning of an original idiomatic expression is condensed or when it is based on a nationally specific notion/ structural form alien to the target languages, the idiomatic expression may be conveyed by a sentence or a longer explanation: a wet blanket людина або обставина, що розхолоджує; well day (well-day) день, коли у хворого не погіршувався стан здоров'я (час між приступами гарячки, малярії тощо); wise behind млявий, що погано міркує; white elephant подарунок, якого важко позбутися (те, що приносить більше турбот, ніж користі); yes man (yes-man) людина, що з усіма згоджується, тільки підтакує (підтакувач); to cut off with a shilling залишити без спадщини; fight like Kilkenny cats битися до взаємного знищення; to accept (the Stewardship) of the Chiltern Hundreds (Parliament) скласти з себе обов'язки члена британського парламенту. It must be added in conclusion that some English idiomatic/ set expressions have a rather transparent lexical meaning and are easy for our students to translate into Ukrainian: to treat one like a lord щедро частувати (як лорда) когось, цяцькатися з кимось; with all one's steam/with all speed щодуху, дуже швидко; with a founded air ображено, з виглядом ображеного; with flags flying/with flying colours тріумфально, переможно; with a good reason не без підстав, недаремно; to be half way between something посередені (бути на середині між чимсь), іти назустріч комусь/чомусь; not born yesterday досвідчений (у житті). Depending on the speech style of the passage/work, in which the idiomatic/phraseological expressions are used, and taking into account the nature of them (literary, colloquial, historical) some modifications of the above-given methods of translations and even new variants of translation may be suggested by the translator. Nevertheless, the aim of translation will always remain the same, viz. to fully render in the target language the lexical meaning and where possible also the structural peculiarities, the picturesqueness, the expressiveness, and the connotative meaning (if any) of the source language idiomatic or stable expressions in the target language. How it may be achieved can be seen on the examples of rendering the meaning of some national idioms.
Peter Newmark in his book “A textbook of translation” stated that:
The Translation of Metaphors
DEFINITIONS Whilst the central problem of translation is the overall choice of a translation method for a text, the most important particular problem is the translation of metaphor. By metaphor, I mean any figurative expression: the transferred sense of a physical word (naitre as 'to originate', its most common meaning); the personification of an abstraction ('modesty forbids me' -en toute modestieje nepeuxpas)' the application of a word or collocation to what it does not literally denote, i.e., to describe one thing in terms of another. All polysemous words (a 'heavy' heart) and most English phrasal verbs ('put off, dissuader, troubler etc.) are potentially metaphorical. Metaphors may be 'single' - viz. one-word - or 'extended' (a collocation, an idiom, a sentence, a proverb, an allegory, a complete imaginative text).
So much for the substance. The purpose of metaphor is basically twofold: its referential purpose is to describe a mental process or state, a concept, a person, an object, a quality or an action more comprehensively and concisely than is possible in literal or physical language; its pragmatic purpose, which is simultaneous, is to appeal to the senses, to interest, to clarify 'graphically', to please, to delight, to surprise. The first purpose is cognitive, the second aesthetic. In a good metaphor, the two purposes fuse like (and are parallel with) content and form; the referential purpose is likely to dominate in a textbook, the aesthetic often reinforced by sound-effect in an advertisement, popular journalism, an art-for-art's sake work or a pop song: 'Those stars make towers on vowels' ('Saxophone Song', Kate Bush) - tours surfoules?, Turin aufSpur? - you have to bear this in mind, when opting for sense or image. Metaphor, both purposes, always involves illusion; like a lie where you are pretending to be someone you are not, a metaphor is a kind of deception, often used to conceal an intention ('Cruise trundling amicably in the English lanes' - The Economist).
Note also that metaphor incidentally demonstrates a resemblance, a common semantic area between two or more or less similar things - the image and the object. This I see first as a process not, as is often stated, as a function. The consequence of a surprising metaphor (a 'papery' cheek? - thin, white, flimsy, frail, feeble, cowardly?) may be the recognition of a resemblance, but that is not its purpose.
TRANSLATING METAPHORS Whenever you meet a sentence that is grammatical but does not appear to make sense, you have to test its apparently nonsensical element for a possible metaphorical meaning, even if the writing is faulty, since it is unlikely that anyone, in an otherwise sensible text, is suddenly going to write deliberate nonsense. Thus, if you are faced with, say, L 'apres-midi, la pluie tue toujours les vitres, you first test for a misprint. If it is an authoritative or expressive text, you translate 'In the afternoons, the rain always kills the window-panes', and perhaps leave interpretation for a footnote. But if it is an anonymous text, you must make an attempt: 'In the afternoons, the rain darkens/muffles/blocks the light from the window-panes.' You cannot avoid this, you have to make sense of everything. Usually, only the more common words have connotations but, at a pinch, any word can be a metaphor, and its sense has to be teased out by matching its primary meaning against its linguistic, situational and cultural contexts.
TYPES OF METAPHOR
I distinguish six types of metaphor: dead, cliche, stock, adapted, recent and original, and discuss them in relation to their contextual factors and translation procedures.
Dead metaphors Dead metaphors, viz. metaphors where one is hardly conscious of the image, frequently relate to universal terms of space and time, the main part of the body, general ecological features and the main human activities: for English, words such as: 'space', 'field', 'line', 'top', 'bottom', 'foot', 'mouth', 'arm', 'circle', 'drop', 'fall', 'rise'. They are particularly used graphically for concepts and for the language of science to clarify or define. Normally dead metaphors are not difficult to translate, but they often defy literal translation, and therefore offer choices.
Thus, for '(in the) field' of human knowledge, French has domaine or sphere, German Bereich or Gebiet, Russian oblas?'. For 'at the bottom of the hill', French has aufond de la colline but German only am Fuft des Bergs. Some simple artefacts such as 'bridge', 'chain', 'link', also act as dead metaphors in some contexts, and these are often translated literally. Lastly, common words may attain a narrow technical sense in certain contexts: e.g., 'dog', 'fin', 'element', 'jack', arbre ('shaft'), plage Cbracket'), metier ('loom'), Mutter ('nut'). These are just as surprising in all foreign languages, and are particularly insidious and irritating if they make half-sense when used in their primary sense. Remember Belloc's advice, which one cannot take serioulsy even though it has a certain truth: look up every word, particularly the words you think you know - and now I will add to Belloc: first in a monolingual, then in a bilingual encyclopaedic dictionary, bearing in mind the rather general tendency in many languages to 'decapitalise' (remove the capital letters from) institutional terms.
Note that in English, at least, dead metaphors can be livened up, sometimes into metonyms, by conversion to phrasal words ('drop out', 'weigh up') and this must be accounted for in the translation (marginal, mettre en balance).
Cliche metaphors I define cliche metaphors as metaphors that have perhaps temporarily outlived their usefulness, that are used as a substitute for clear thought, often emotively, but without corresponding to the facts of the matter. Take the passage: 'The County School will in effect become not a backwater but a break through in educational development which will set treiidsforlhc future. In this its traditionsmll help and it may wei/become ajewel in the crown of the county's education.' This is an extract from a specious editorial, therefore a vocative text, and in translation (say for a private client), the series of cliches have to be retained (mare stagnante, percee, donnera le ton, joyau de la couronne, traditions, not to mention the tell-tale en effect for 'well') in all their hideousness; if this were part of a political speech or any authoritative statement, the same translation procedures would be appropriate.
However, a translator should get rid of cliches of any kind (collocations as well as metaphors), when they are used in an 'anonymous' text, viz. an informative text where only facts or theories are sacred and, by agreement with the SL author, in public notices, instructions, propaganda or publicity, where the translator is trying to obtain an optimum reaction from the readership. Here there is a choice between reducing the cliche metaphor to sense or replacing it with a less tarnished metaphor: 'a politician who has made his mark' - ein profilierter (vogue-word) Politiker, politicien qui s'estfait un nom, qui s'est impose. For an expression such as 'use up every ounce of energy', 'at the end ofthe day', 'not in a month of Sundays', there are many possible solutions, not excluding the reduction of the metaphors to simple and more effective sense: tendre ses dernieres energies, définitivement, en nolle occasion and you have to consider economy as well as the nature ofthe text. Bear in mind that a cultural equivalent, ifit is well understood (say 'every oimceofenergy'), is likely to have a stronger emotional impact than a functional (culture-free, third term) equivalent (grain d'tnergie). If in doubt, I always reduce a cliche metaphor or simile to sense or at least to dead metaphor: 'rapier-like wit' -espritmordant, acerbe.
Cliche and stock metaphors overlap, and it is up to you to distinguish them, since for informative (i.e., the majority of) texts, the distinction may be important. Note that the many translation decisions which are made at the margin of a translation principle such as this one are likely to be intuitive. The distinction between 'cliche' and 'stock' may even lie in the linguistic context of the same metaphor.
Stock or standard metaphors I define a stock metaphor as an established metaphor which in an informal context is an efficient and concise method of covering a physical and/or mental situation both referentially and pragmatically - a stock metaphor has a certain emotional warmth - and which is not deadened by overuse. (You may have noticed that I personally dislike stock metaphors, stock collocations and phaticisms, but I have to admit that they keep the world and society going - they 'oil the wheels' (mettre de I'huile dans les rouages, schmieren den Karren, die Dinge erleichtern).)
Stock metaphors are sometimes tricky to translate, since their apparent equivalents may be out of date or affected or used by a different social class or age group. You should not use a stock metaphor that does not come naturally to you. Personally I would not use: 'he's in a giving humour' (il est en veins degenerosite); 'he's a man of good appearance' (ilprisente bieri); 'he's on the eve of getting married' (i/ est a la veilledesemarier). All these are in the Harrap dictionary butthey have not 'the implications of utterance' (J. R. Firth) for me; but if they have to you, use them.
The first and most satisfying procedure for translating a stock metaphor is to reproduce the same image in the TL, provided it has comparable frequency and currency in the appropriate TL register, e.g. 'keep the pot boiling', faire bouillirla iiiarniiieCcam a living', 'keep somethinggoing); Jeter unjour nouveau sur, 'throwa new light on'. This is rare for extended metaphors (but probably more common for English-German than English-French), more common for single 'universal' metaphors, such as 'wooden face', visage de bois, hölzernes Gesicht; 'rise', 'drop in prices': la montee, la baisse des prix, die Preissteigerung, -ruckgang. Note, for instance, that the metaphor 'in store' can be translated as en reserve in many but not all collocations, and in even fewer as auf Lager haben (eine Überraschung auf Lager haben).
Symbols or metonyms can be transferred provided there is culture overlap: 'hawks and doves', faucons et colombes, Falken und Tauben; this applies to many other animals, although the correspondence is not perfect: a dragon is maleficent in the West, beneficent in the Far East. The main senses are symbolised by their organs, plus the palate (lepalais, derGaumen), for taste; non-cultural proverbs may transfer their images: 'all that glitters isn't gold'; alles ist nicht Gold was gldnzt; tout ce qui brille n est pas or.
But a more common procedure for translating stock metaphors is to replace the SL image with another established TL image, if one exists that is equally frequent within the register. Such one-word metaphors are rare: 'a drain on resources', saigne e de ressources, unsere Mittel belasten (all these are rather inaccurate); 'spice', sel. Extended stock metaphors, however, often change their images, particularly when they are embedded in proverbs, which are often cultural, e.g. 'that upset the applecart'; qa a toutfichupar tern; dashatalles uberden Haufen geworfen. These examples are characteristic of translated stock metaphors, in that the equivalence is far from accurate: the English denotes an upset balance or harmony and is between informal and colloquial; the French stresses general disorder and, being more colloquial, has the stronger emotional impact; the German has the same sense as the French, but is casual and cool in comparison.
When the metaphors derive from the same topic, equivalence is closer: 'hold all the cards'; allé Triimpfe in derHandhalten (cf. avoir tous les atouts dans sonjeu). Note that the French and German are stronger than the English, which can keep the same image: 'hold all the trumps'.
English's typical cultural source of metaphor may be cricket - 'keep a straight bat', 'draw stumps', 'knock for six', 'bowl out', 'bowl over', 'on a good/ sticky wicket', 'that's not cricket' (cf. 'fair play'; 'fair'); 'I'm stumped'; 'field a question'. Note that all these metaphors are rather mild and educated middle-class, and you normally have to resist the temptation to translate them too colloquially and strongly. 'Fairplay' has gone into many European languages, which represents a weakness of foreign translators (in principle, non-cultural terms such as qualities of character should not be transferred) - but 'fair' is only transferred to German, Czech and Dutch.
A stock metaphor can only be translated exactly if the image is transferred within a correspondingly acceptable and established collocation (e.g. 'widen the gulf between them', élargir le gouffre entre eux, die Kluft erweitem). As soon as you produce a new image, however acceptable the TL metaphor, there is a degree of change of meaning and usually of tone. Thus, des tas de nourriture may be a precise equivalent of'heaps of food'; 'tons of food' or 'loads of food' may be adequately rendered by des tas de nourriture, un tas de nourriture, but 'loads' is heavier than 'heaps', as is 'tons' than 'loads'. (Much depends on the imagined tone of voice.) These additional components cannot be economically rendered within the collocation (grand tes would not help, as there is no reference criterion for grand), so there is a choice between compensation elsewhere in the linguistic context and intermitting or under-translating. When you translate there is always the danger of pursuing a particular too far, accreting superfluous meaning, and so the whole thing gets out of balance. Everything is possible, even the reproduction of the sound-effects, but at the cost of economy. The same caveat applies to the third and obvious translation procedure for stock metaphors, reducing to sense or literal language: not only will components of sense be missing or added, but the emotive or pragmatic impact will be impaired or lost. Thus the metaphor: 'I can read him like a book' has an immediacy which is lacking even in ich kann ihn wie in einem Bucklesen ('I can read him as in a book'), which weakens half the metaphor into a simile; je sais, je devine tout ce qu 'il pense merely generalises the meaning - it should be preceded by a son aspect, a son air - and the emphasis is transferred from the completeness of the reading to the comprehensiveness of the knowledge. Even though the English metaphor is standard, it still has the surprising element of a good metaphor, and the French version is prosaic in comparison. Again, 'a sunny smile' could be translated as un sourire radieux which is itself almost a metaphor, or un sourire épanoui, but neither translation has the warmth, brightness, attractiveness of the English metaphor. The 'delicacy' or degree and depth of detail entered into in the componential analysis of a stock metaphor will depend on the importance you give it in the context. Maybe a synonym will do: Notre but n'estpas defaire de la Pologne un foyer de conflits: 'It isn't our purpose to make Poland into a centre (source, focus) of conflict.' For a metaphor such as visiblement englue dans la toile d'araignee des compromis et des accommodements, you may wish to keep the vividness of 'visibly ensnared in the spider's web of compromises and accommodation', but, if in an informative text this is too flowery and obtrusive, it could be modified or reduced to 'clearly hampered by the tangle of compromise he is exposed to'. Or again, il a claque les pones du PCE may just be a familiar alternative to 'he left the Spanish Communist Party' or 'he slammed the door on', 'he refused to listen to', 'he rebuffed'. The meaning of a word such as claquer can be explicated referentially ('left abruptly, finally, decisively') or pragmatically ('with a bang, vehemently, with a snap'), extra-contextually or contextually, again depending on considerations of referential accuracy orpragamatic economy.
Further, you have to bear in mind that reducing a stock metaphor to sense may clarify, demystify, make honest a somewhat tendentious statement. Sometimes it is possible to do this naturally, where the TL has no metaphorical equivalent for a SL political euphemism: 'In spite of many redundancies, the industry continues to flourish - Maigre les licenciements (Entlassungen), la mise en chômage de nombreux employes, cette Industrie n 'en est pas mains en plein essor. Stock metaphors are the reverse of plain speaking about any controversial subject or whatever is taboo in a particular culture. They cluster around death, sex, excretion, war, unemployment. They are the handiest means of disguising the truth of physical fact. Inevitably, a stock metaphor such as disparaitre (si je venais a disparaitre, 'if I were to die') becomes harsher when reduced to sense.
Stock cultural metaphors can sometimes be translated by retaining the metaphor (or converting it to simile), and adding the sense. This is a compromise procedure, which keeps some of the metaphor's emotive (and cultural) effect for the 'expert', whilst other readers who would not understand the metaphor are given an explanation. Thus il a une memoire d 'elephant -'He never forgets-like an elephant.' // marche a pas de tortue - 'He's as slow as a tortoise.' 77 a I'esprit rabelaisien - 'He has a ribald, Rabelaisian wit.' The procedure (sometimes referred to as the 'Mozart method', since it is intended to satisfy both the connoisseur and the less learned), is particularly appropriate for eponymous stock or original metaphor, e.g. un adjectifhugolesque - a 'resounding' ('lugubrious' etc., depending on context) 'adjective, such as Victor Hugo might have used'. When an eponymous metaphor becomes too recherche, or the image is classical and likely to be unfamiliar to a younger educated generation, the metaphor may be reduced to sense (victoire a la Pyrrhus, 'ruinous victory'; c'est un Cresus, 'a wealthy man'; le benjamin, 'the youngest son') but this depends on the importance of the image in the SL and correspondingly the TL context.
Stock metaphors in 'anonymous' texts may be omitted if they are redundant. I see no point in his 'sharp, razor-edge wit' (esprit mordant). Translation of sense by stock metaphor is more common in literary texts, where it is not justified, than in non-literary texts, where it may be so, particularly in the transfer from a rather formal to a less formal variety of language, or in an attempt to enliven the style of an informative text. Expressions like das ist hier einschla 'gigcw be translated as 'that's the point here'; erverschob es, daszu tun, 'he puts off doing that' - here the metaphors are dead rather than stock; man mufi betonen daft - 'one must highlight the fact that..."
This procedure may be better applied to verbs than to nouns or adjectives since these metaphorical variants ('tackle', 'deal with', 'see', 'go into', 'take up', 'look into' (a subject)) are often less obtrusive than other types of metaphors.
Adapted metaphors In translation, an adapted stock metaphor should, where possible, be translated by an equivalent adapted metaphor, particularly in a text as 'sacred' as one by Reagan (if it were translated literally, it might be incomprehensible). Thus, 'the ball is a little in their court' - c'estpeut-etre a euxdejouer; 'sow division' - semerla division (which is in fact normal and natural). In other cases, one has to reduce to sense: 'get them in the door' - les introduire (faire le premier pas'?); 'outsell the pants off our competitors' - epuisernosproduits etnos concurrents (?). The special difficulty with these 'sacred' texts is that one knows they are not written by their author so one is tempted to translate more smartly than the original.
There are various degrees of adapted stock metaphors ('almost carrying coals to Newcastle' - presque porter de I'eau a la riviere; 'pouring Goldwater on the missiles' - Goldwatersemontre peu enthousiastepour les engins) but since their sense is normally clear the translation should 'err' on the side of caution and comprehension. Recent metaphors By recent metaphor, I mean a metaphorical neologism, often 'anonymously' coined, which has spread rapidly in the SL. When this designates a recently current object orprocess, it is a metonym. Otherwise it may be a new metaphordesignating one of a number of 'prototypical' qualities that continually 'renew' themselves in language, e.g., fashionable ('in', 'with it', dans le vent); good ('groovy', sensass; fab); drunk ('pissed', cuit); without money ('skint', sans le rond); stupid ('spastic', 'spasmoid'); having sex ('doing a line'); having an orgasm ('making it', 'coming'); woman chaser ('womaniser'); policeman ('fuzz', flic). Recent metaphors designating new objects or processes are treated like other neologisms, with particular reference to the 'exportability' of the referent and the level of language of the metaphor. A recent neologism, 'head-hunting', being 'transparent', can be through-translated (chasse aux tetes), provided its sense (recruiting managers, sometimes covertly, from various companies) is clear to the readership. Again 'greenback', a familiar alternative for a US currency note, has probably only recently come into British English, and is translated 'straight'. 'Walkman', a trade name, should be decommercialised, if possible (transistor portatif).
Original metaphors We must now consider original metaphors, created or quoted by the SL writer. In principle, in authoritative and expressive texts, these should be translated literally, whether they are universal, cultural or obscurely subjective. I set this up as a principle, since original metaphors (in the widest sense): (a) contain the core of an important writer's message, his personality, his comment on life, and though they may have a more or a less cultural element, these have to be transferred neat; (b) such metaphors are a source of enrichment for the target language. Tieck and Schlegel's translations of Shakespeare's great plays have given German many original expressins, but many more metaphors could have been transferred. Take Wilfred Owen's 'We wise who with a thought besmirch Blood over all our soul' ('Insensibility') and Gunter Bohnke's translation: Wir weisen, die mit einem Gedanken Blutbesudelr. unsere Seele, whatever this means, the translator can only follow the original lexically since the metre will not quite let the grammar be reproduced - the metaphor is virtually a literal rendering, and the readers of each version are faced with virtually the same difficulties of interpretation. However, if an original cultural metaphor appears to you to be a little obscure and not very important, you can sometimes replace it with a descriptive metaphor or reduce it to sense. Evelyn Waugh's 'Oxford, a place in Lyonnesse' could be 'Oxford, lost in the mythology of a remote, vanished region' (or even, 'in Atlantis').
Finally, I consider the problem of original or bizarre metaphors in 'anonymous' non-literary texts. The argument in favour of literal translation is that the metaphor will retain the interest of the readership; the argument against is that the metaphor may jar with the style ofthe text. Thus in an economics text, Quelque seduisante que puisse etre une methode, c'est a la fagon dont elle mord sur le riel qu'il la fautjuger (Lecerf) - 'However attractive a working method may be, it must be judged by its bite in real life' is not far from the manner of The Economist (or Spiegel). The metaphor could be modified by 'its impact on reality' or reduced to sense by 'its practical effect'. It seems to me that one has to make some kind of general decision here, depending on the number and variety of such metaphors in the whole text. Again, a typical Guardian editorial starts, under the title 'Good
Faith amid the Frothings', 'and on the second day, the squealing (sic) of brakes was loud in the land... The National Coal Board had gone about as far as it could go.' Such metaphorical exuberance would hardly be possible in another European language, and, unless the purpose of a translation were to demonstrate this exuberance ('a ton of enforced silence was dumped on Mr. Eaton... window of opportunity... dribbling offers, and trickling talks... Kinnock scrambles out from under' - all in the first paragraph), the metaphors should be modified or eliminated: 'The NCB suddenly issued no more statements... Mr. Eaton made no more statements... An opportunity... Insignificant offers... Slow talks... Mr. Kinnock emerges' - but a great deal of the sense as well as all the picturesqueness, flavour and sound-effect of the original would be lost. (The connection between metaphor and sound-effects, more often than not sacrificed in translation, is close; metaphor can summon the other three senses only visually.)
Original or odd metaphors in most informative texts are open to a variety of translation procedures, depending, usually, on whether the translator wants to emphasise the sense or the image. The choice of procedures in expressive or authoritative texts is much narrower, as is usual in semantic translation. Nevertheless, in principle, unless a literal translation 'works' or is mandatory, the translation of any metaphor is the epitome of all translation, in that it always offers choices in the direction either of sense or of an image, or a modification of one, or a combination of both, as I have shown, and depending, as always, on the contextual factors, not least on the importance of the metaphor within the text.
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