An Empirical Research On MTI Student Translators’ Metaphorical Competence In Translation Process

As metaphor is prevalent in everyday language, successful translation entails thedevelopment of a good command of metaphorical language. The study of metaphor inthe context of translation studies has not, unfortunately, kept pace with the demands oftranslation practice and translation training. This study aims primarily to fill part of thisgap of knowledge.Based on this purpose, the research questions in this thesis are: what translationprocesses do translators go through when translating metaphor? what translationproblems do they meet and what translation strategies do they apply in the process oftranslating metaphor? what constitutes metaphorical competence in translation process?The major sources of the data for this study are: Think-aloud protocols done by MTIstudent translators, and their interview recordings, behavior observation notes andtranslation texts.As far as the translation stages and levels are concerned, the study finds that theprocess of translating metaphor occurs at four progressive stages (recognizing,abstracting, mapping, and expressing) and two levels of text (conceptual and linguistic).After calculating the time the translator spent in each translation stage and level, theresult shows that the stage of expressing and the level of linguistic manipulation playthe largest part in the process of translating metaphor.As far as the translation problemsand strategies are concerned, the study analyses the major problems the translatorsencounter and the frequent strategies they apply in metaphor translation process.Translation problems include mistakes in abstracting conceptual meaning fromlinguistic surface, breakdown in conceptual mapping, incompatibility with the globaldomain and demetaphorization in TT. Translation strategies include same conceptualmapping, different conceptual mapping and deleting conceptual mapping. Sameconceptual mapping can be further divided into four sub-categories: identical imageschematic mapping, shifting from a simple image metaphor to a rich image one,shifting from a rich image metaphor to a simple image one, and same mapping butfrom different perspectives. Translation researchers agree that translation competence generally involves theparameters of language competence, textual competence, subject competence, culturalcompetence and transfer competence. If one accepts the idea that metaphor is aconceptual process of mapping between abstract concepts and linguistic codes, the fivetypes of competence are insufficient. This justifies proposing the metaphoricalcompetence in the translation process, which ideally combines metaphoricalcompetence and translation competence together. It consists of four sub-competences:linguistic competence, cultural competence, textual competence, and conceptualcompetence, which will be discussed detailedly in this thesis.