Metaphors we translate by? Towards a domain-based approach to conventional metaphor in L2 translation pedagogy

The starting point for this chapter is Lakoff and Johnson’s contention that metaphors structure ‘the ordinary conceptual system of our culture’ (1980). The two authors make the related point that though ‘alive’, these metaphors are fixed within the lexicon. The primary intention is to explore this aspect of the lexicon in the ambit of L2 translation pedagogy applied to the language pair of Italian-English. The resources provided by dictionaries (both monolingual and bilingual) for L2 student translators approaching the task of translating figurative language, be it in the form of tropes like conventional metonymy, synecdoche, antonomasia and personification, or in the shape of conventional metaphor, are largely unsatisfactory and far from systematic. As a consequence translation trainers are regularly faced with the difficulties of suggesting a method for coping with this aspect of the lexicon. Often the choice seems to lie between either trusting to the students’ ‘naturally developing’ figurative awareness or jettisoning all forms of intuition in preference for the ‘certitudes’ of working with corpora, or a compromise combination of both. In the light of Lakoff and Johnson’s evidence that conceptual metaphor is used systematically across domains, and is thus likely to be encountered in a variety of domains and text types, the paper sets out assess strategies for developing student awareness of what is involved in the transfer of this area of the lexicon into the L2. Referring to a learner corpus of advanced MA-level, L2 student translations of SL texts produced by a cultural institution, the paper also attempts to assess the cultural issues involved in the transfer of metaphors through processes like transposition and modulation and the bearing this typology of shift can have on textual equivalence