Translation of Metaphor

1. THE METAPHOR AND ITS PURPOSE

Metaphor can be defined as an indirect comparison between two or more apparently unrelated things or subjects. The point of similarity ‘may be physical but often it is chosen for its connotations’ (Newmark, 1988, p.85).

Newmark (1988) discusses a number of functions of metaphor: to define something more closely; a decoration to show resemblances; to create emotive effect; as an object of interest for media; and lastly as a ‘basic element of language where it later becomes dead or literal language’. For him, translation theory is mainly concerned with the serious purpose of metaphor which is, “to describe an entity, event or quality more comprehensively and concisely and in a more complex way than is possible by using literal language” (p.84).

There are five terms related to metaphor, which define its various related concepts. Firstly, ‘object’ is ‘the item described by the metaphor’. Secondly, ‘image’ is the item ‘in terms of which the object is described’. Thirdly, ‘sense’ is ‘the point of similarity’ between object and image. Fourthly, ‘metaphor’ is the actual word taken up. Lastly, the ‘metonym’ is a one word image which is used in place of whole, and has potential to become ‘dead metaphor’ (literal language) e.g. ‘fin’ of a motor bike. (p.85)

2. TYPES OF METAPHOR

Newmark (1988b) provides a classification consisting of six types, which are discussed below with appropriate examples and sub-types.

2.1 Dead Metaphors: They are “metaphors which often relate to universal terms of time and space, general ecological features and main human activities” (p.106). Dead metaphors have become literal language because users do not recognize them as metaphors, so their images are lost. Idioms, metonyms, synecdoche, and words accepted as technical terms also become dead metaphors. They add to the number of words in a language.

Dead metaphors can be of three types: firstly where image and sense is retained in a second language; secondly thousands of words denoting objects e.g. metonyms; and lastly non-technical words which appear to have concrete and figurative meaning at the same time e.g. ‘foot of a hill’.

2.2 Cliché: They lie between dead and stock metaphors. These metaphors are “used as a substitute for clear thought, often emotively, but without corresponding to the facts of the matter” (1988b, p.107). They “usually consist of two types of collocations: figurative adjective and literal noun e.g. ‘filthy lucre’; or figurative verb and figurative noun e.g. ‘explore all avenues’” (1988, p.87).

2.3 Stock Metaphors: Newmark (1988b, p.108) defines this type 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”. They may have cultural distance or overlap; may be used universally or at least in a wide spread sense, and may have subjective aspects. He notes that there might be no universal metaphors, but hopes if ‘societies reach certain stage of physical health and well-being, there will be some basic universal metaphors’ (1988, p.87).

2.4 Adapted Metaphors: They are actually stock metaphors but are adapted by the writer or speaker into a new context.

2.5 Recent Metaphors: Newmark (1988b, p.111) defines these metaphors as “a metaphorical neologism, often 'anonymously' coined, which has spread rapidly in the SL”. They are often categorised as a slang.

2.6 Original Metaphors: These metaphors are “created or quoted by the SL writer” (1988b, p.112). They “contain the core of an important writer's message, his personality, his comment on life” (ibid). These metaphors are not only complex but have double meanings. They might also contain “personal or dialectal … irrational element peculiar to the imagination” (1988, p.93).

3. PROCEDURES OF METAPHOR TRANSLATION

Newmark (1988, p.88) notes following seven procedure of metaphor translation:

3.1 The same image is reproduced in TL ‘provided that it is comparable in frequency and use in the appropriate register’. One word metaphors are more commonly translated by this method, while translation of complex metaphors or idioms depends on cultural overlap. Reproducing one-word metaphors representing sense of an event or quality instead of an entity is more difficult e.g. ‘elbow one’s way’. Similes are more cautious than metaphors, and must normally be translated in any type of text. Lastly, animal abuse can have cultural or subjective connotations but can be quite universal as well (‘swine’ is symbol of filth and dirt everywhere).

3.2 SL image can be replaced with a standard TL image provided that it is culturally compatible in TL, and ‘presumably coined by one person and diffused through popular speech’. Stereotyped metaphors should be converted to sense whether they exist in TL or not. Euphemisms are also metaphors and often have to be replaced by cultural equivalent, unless reader has to be informed in similar way as SL reader.

3.3 The metaphor can be translated as a simile while retaining the image. This modifies the shock of metaphor, ‘particularly if TL text is not emotive in character’. This procedure can be used for any type of word, and original metaphor.

3.4 The metaphor can be translated as simile along with its sense (or metaphor plus sense). This is a compromise procedure and combines communicative and semantic translations together which address both layman and expert reader. The main focus here is on the ‘gloss’ rather than equivalent effect. It is noteworthy that some metaphors may be incomplete in TL without the addition of a sense component.

3.5 The metaphor can be converted into sense. This procedure can be applied in any type of text, and preferred when SL to TL image replacement is extra broad in terms of sense or register. To perform this procedure, the sense of metaphor should be analysed componentially because image is ‘pludri-dimensional’.

3.6 A rather radical approach is to delete the metaphor along with sense component if it is redundant. A caution is that SL text should not be ‘authoritative’ or ‘expression of writer’s personality’. The translator should make decision after weighing what is more important and less important in the text. An empirical justification of such deletion comes if ‘metaphor’s function is being fulfilled elsewhere in the text’.

3.7 Sometimes translator wants to make sure that image will be understood properly so he adds a gloss as well. Thus he transfers same metaphor along with its sense. E.g “The tongue is a fire” can be translated as follows “A fire ruins things; what we say also ruins things”. This may suggest lack of confidence in metaphor’s power and clarity, but it can be useful if metaphor is repeated.

REFERENCES

Newmark, P. (1988). Approaches to Translation. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Newmark, P. (1988b). A Text book of Translation. London: Prentice Hall.

Translator as a Co-Creator

Translation is a process by which meaning in one sign system is transferred to another sign system. Here the term ‘sign system’ is limited to linguistic signs only. The person who does this act is called a translator, and bears the responsibility to transfer meaning from source sign system or source language (SL) to target sign system or target language (TL) in an as accurate as possible way. The dilemma of translation, and hence for the translator, starts from within the system of language and its nature. No two words in a language can have same meaning, they might be similar in some aspects but one hundred percent equality or synonymy is not possible. This dilemma widens when words belong to two different languages which have different cultural roots and are distant from each other on the basis of time and space.

It is said that translation is like planting and meaning is the plant which is taken from one soil and planted in a new soil. Meaning exists in a language system but it also has deep roots in culture because language is like a heart and culture is like a body to it. Both language and culture cannot live apart from each other, and upto some extent they do reflect in each other. So the translator is like a person standing on the boundary of one language and culture and importing something to another language and culture. This process needs to be done faithfully, creatively and carefully. During the process of meaning transfer, a translator has to carefully decide what to retain and what to loose. He has to carefully decide how much he has liberty to be creative while giving meaning a new dress of words. At the same time he needs to be careful and faithful to the original meaning of source language. This process can be seen on a continuum or scale of which one end is occupied by ‘creativity’ and the other end is occupied by ‘faithfulness to source’. The translator has to decide what to loose and what to gain on this scale, and according to subject matter, context, and personal taste and experience, he moves back and forth on this continuum or scale.

Subject matter or area of translation is the most powerful factor which affects the translator’s decision to be more creative or less creative. There are some subject areas which require little creativity and are simple to translate. The technology and science related areas, news reports and journalism, websites and software localization, manuals and tutorials etc. are some of the areas which have certain kind of universality. The concepts are usually universally shared and translator just has to change label for specific meaning or concept. Thus the process of translation becomes pretty straight forward with translator being faithful with the source as much as possible. On the contrary, translating a literary piece demands totally opposite skills from the translator. It is generally recommended that translator is also a writer in his mother tongue, or the language in which he is going to translate. He needs to be very careful with meaning but at the same time beauty and creativity are very important as well. He has to be innovative and creative in translation to target language, so that meaning – along with mood, connotations and denotations, formality and cultural ties – is transformed to target language. Juggling on all these fronts requires that translator takes the ‘sense’ of the source and creates something new in the target language. Though generally he may choose a different genre, but ultimately translation will be considered a piece of literature.

The matter of context and personal choice is of less importance as compared to subject matter of translation. The context decides whether translator needs to be creative or needs to retain original meaning of the source. Highly culturally rooted words, e.g. local dishes’ names, are examples which cannot be translated from one language to another. So the translator has to choose faithfulness with the source instead of creating something new. Translations of great literary works like “War and Peace” have made translators to choose original labels instead of using locally available synonyms because of the deep cultural roots of the source, which makes them untranslatable. The matter of understandability for the audience may also be a reason to choose source terms instead of target terms or creation of new ones. This is specially true in localization of modern day software and application programs, where a balance has to be maintained between innovation and/or creation and faithfulness with the source.

Concluding the essay, following opinion can be drawn. Translation is a creative process. A translator has to decide between creativity and faithfulness to source. Sometimes he will be creating new terms, labels and genres; he will be writing the original source in a new tone suitable for the target language. Other times he will be sticking with the source, and trying to imitate words, labels, structures and genres of the source into the target language. So a translator is at the same time a creator of something new as well as a retainer of the old. He is a ‘co-creator’ as well as a ‘translator’; and there are factors which influence the choice of these roles.

Critical Discourse Analysis Using Van Dijk’s Model

Line#	Text	Para#
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39	Dr Qadri’s petition: loyalty debate 1st March, 2013 DR Tahirul Qadri’s petition was turned down by the Supreme Court. Whatever the reasons given in the court’s decision, the louder message was delivered home and abroad that the Pakistani dual nationals’ loyalties are suspect because they took the oath on other’s loyalty. In other words, they are disloyal. This message caused utter disgrace to all Pakistanis living abroad with dual nationality. The oath alone cannot determine loyalty. The Supreme Court and any other court of this world cannot pass verdict on emotions and feelings like love, hate, like, dislike, loyalty and disloyalty. If we accept the verdict on loyalty issue, the government then should change the name of the ministry of overseas Pakistanis. It should now rename it ministry of overseas disloyal Pakistanis. One more thing, we must not forget that overseas Pakistanis are born citizens of Pakistan like us who do not take the oath of loyalty to Pakistan but they remain loyal. How many Pakistani politicians having only Pakistani nationalities are loyal to Pakistan? Who knows? I humbly request the Supreme Court to identify who are loyal to Pakistan: those who sent money to Pakistan and enriched foreign exchange, or those who exploited Pakistan’s exchequer and sent money to foreign banks. Irrespective of Dr Qadri’s personality, we should focus on what he is saying. Facts about the Election Commission’s formation are public and the media also reported that constitutional process was not adopted in the appointment of some members. I think this is the constitutional responsibility of the Supreme Court to look into the matter so that the institution which is responsible for holding free and fair elections should get out of this ambiguity. Failing to do that may lead to another crisis that may happen after the election results. In the present state of judicial activism, personal conservations of judges with petitioners and the attorney-general overshadow the court decisions and unleash a new debate in the media. Although the role of the judiciary is no doubt remarkable in the prevention of corruption, prolongation of hearings on sensitive issues wasted time and generated uncertainty in the country. The NRO case, memo commission, Haj corruption case, Arsalan Iftikhar case are a few examples which ended in vain. Courts should not be selective in picking up the cases. On trivial emotional expressions of some politicians, the Supreme Court took notice and invoked contempt law while, on the other hand, on Senator Faisal Raza Abdi’s open allegations against judges and the Supreme Court in the media and in public, the judges showed restraint. Exclusive selection of cases by courts would undermine the judicial neutrality. M. TAHA                       Karachi	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

1. Van Dijk’s CDA Model

Teun van Dijk is a prominent name in critical discourse studies, and his model of CD analysis is one of the influential approaches in the field. Van Dijk (1993) has described in detail how to inter-relate power and dominance relations to text and discourse structures, thus relating macro level and social cognitive understandings to micro level text and talk, and to find out how power and dominance is manifested, produced and reproduced through discourse. The present analysis is an attempt to apply his model of CD analysis to a Letter to Editor taken from Pakistani English newspaper Dawn.

2. Background

The letter is written in the broader national debate about Dr. Qadri’s intentions and in the aftermath of Pakistani Supreme Court’s rejection of his petition to review the establishment procedure of Election Commission of Pakistan. Dr. Qadri arrived in Pakistan in December, 2012 and he orchestrated an impressive sit down strike in front of Parliament, and several demonstrations in different cities including one in Lahore. His arrival created quite a stir among politicians and generally media campaign was against him. After several demonstrations, he went to Supreme Court and petitioned to review the establishment procedure of Election Commission of Pakistan, which was rejected by Supreme Court of Pakistan as he was a dual national. At the same time, majority of media outlets criticized him for his dual nationality, raised doubts on his intentions and accused him of derailing the democratic process. The letter is written in this context, while it counters the majority negative discourse against Dr. Qadri, it also highlights another issue i.e. the loyalty of overseas Pakistanis. The critical analysis of this piece of discourse is as follows:

3. Analysis

3.1 Access: The letter writer appears to be a common Pakistani citizen with interest in politics so he has no exclusive access to any media related genres; and he is dependent on the selection processes of newspaper to get a place in letters to editor column. This fact makes his contribution a resistive and counter discourse. As the background also suggests, general media campaign was against Dr. Qadri and this letter favours his opinion.

The letter is written in English language, to an English newspaper which is considered one of the oldest newspapers of country, and has a reputation among ruling elite, political and bureaucratic class of the country. Thus the writer gets access to voice his opinion directly to the dominant group, though he appear not to be from that class.

3.2 Genre: The genre is ‘Letters to Editor’ section of newspapers, which in different writers’ opinion is “among the few outlets available to the public for voicing opinion” (Kapoor and Botan, 1992, p. 5). Although there are ‘rules of selection’ (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2002) for Letters to Editor, still they provide a window for the reader community to voice their opinion. The text type is argumentative in nature, and usually are written in response to already printed editorials, opinion articles, other letters or broader social and/or political debate going on in society. This letter is also an example of response to such a political debate going on in national press, electronic and social media.

3.3 Communicative acts and social meanings: The letter is a counter discourse which tries to counter dominant discourse of defamation of a political figure. It shows the heterogeneity of the society, and disagreement among the masses about the legitimacy of Dr. Qadri’s quest to reform election process including the Election Commission of Pakistan. The letter also voices concern about the impartiality of highest court in the country, and thus again highlights the scars of disagreement among the society about the role of courts or judiciary.

3.4 Participant positions and roles: As already mentioned the letter writer appears to be a member of civil society, with apparently no or less significant authority in terms of political or social influence.

3.5 Speech act: The speech acts performed by the letter writer are assertive in nature. Taking the text as a whole, the writer accuses higher courts of impartiality, casts doubt on their ability to be just, tries to prove Dr. Qadri’s cause to be just, accuses politicians of the problems in the country. As well as, he asserts that courts should be just and fair in case selection.

3.6 Macrosemantics: topics As the heading in line 1 shows the topic is “Dr Qadri’s petition: loyalty debate”. The topic can be rephrased as “If Dr. Qadri is disloyal then all overseas Pakistanis are”, “Courts should not rule on loyalty”, “Supreme Court is being partial regarding Dr. Qadri”….. Although the topic given, most probably, by the ‘Letters to Editor’ section’s editor is less catchy, less emotional and looks more reasonable, the content of the letter shows that above exemplified topics can also fit as a heading. The topic thus is not just about Dr. Qadri being right or wrong, the writer overgeneralizes the available facts and draws on the emotions of the readers to prove his point. In that emotional state, he accuses the highest court in the country of being partial and unjust.

3.7 Superstructures: Text Schemata and Argumentation ‘Letter to Editor’ are mainly known as their argumentative structure. Richardson (2007) provides a detailed review of argumentation strategies, which was helpful in argumentation analysis of this piece of text as well. The writer uses two fold strategy in argumentation: drawing on emotions of the readers as well as logical argumentation. The argumentation seems to have two divisions which are mentioned here:

1) The Supreme Court’s decision regarding Dr. Qadri is wrong because:

a. Court cannot rule on loyalty or disloyalty (the writer compares a legitimate jurisdictional area of court with other emotions.)

b. This way all overseas Pakistanis will become disloyal.

c. Taking oath doesn’t mean one is loyal to another.

d. Politicians are more disloyal then common overseas Pakistanis.

e. It has caused disgrace for Pakistanis.

2) Courts are biased because:

            a. They are selective in cases.

            b. They have personal grudges with petitioners.

            c. They prolong hearings of legitimate cases while illegitimate ones are given undue importance.

            d. The Election Commission does have constitutional problems in its establishment procedure.

3) Therefore:

            a. Courts should not do this.

            b. EC formation process should be reviewed.

The first argument of the writer mostly invokes reader’s emotions by using noun phrases like “ministry of overseas disloyal Pakistanis” (line 12-13), “utter disgrace” and rhetorical questions (para 5). The writer uses apparently flawed argumentation by including Dr. Qadri to common Pakistanis working abroad and putting them against the ‘politicians’. He ignores the fact the Dr. Qadri himself is a politician, thus he wrongly presupposes that Dr. Qadri is “not politician”, and “his intentions are good”.

The second argumentation uses logical arguments to prove the point. The writer provides a number of examples to support his case that ‘courts are partial’, a few of which are apparently over-extended (e.g. Senator Raza Abidi’s example, he was actually called in contempt of court case and wasn’t ignored at all, the NRO case in which government was given grace period to act upon it and afterwards court did take a strict action against elected PM in contempt case). The writer also ignores the background surrounding Dr. Qadri’s sudden arrival, the rumors of derailing the system and a ‘technocratic government’ which led Supreme Court to take immediate action. The writer also ignores the fact that Dr. Qadri orchestrated a sit strike in front of Parliament and a demonstration in Lahore at his arrival which consumed (according to some estimates) more than 1 billion rupees,  which casts doubts on his intentions as a sincere ‘common Pakistani’ concerned about the political hegemony in the country.

Concluding the argumentation analysis, the writer though ignores certain facts, but provides a counter discourse with certain good arguments which legitimatize the actions of Dr. Qadri and insist that the courts to act in his favour.

3.7 Local meaning and coherence:

a) Level of specificity and degree of completeness: The writer over-generalizes the working class Pakistanis abroad and implicitly includes Dr. Qadri among them, though that’s is not the case. He is a politician, who took Canadian citizenship as a scholar and politician. The examples for his arguments are present in abundance but opposite arguments are ignored and only an acknowledgement sentence is provided (line 31) which in itself is highlighting the oncoming argument with traditional “Although xxx but yyy” structure.

b) Perspective: The writer’s perspective is clearly against the general opinion about Dr. Qadri, and he is against Supreme Court’s ruling about the matter as well.

c) Implicitness: As mentioned above the writes uses a number of presuppositions. He implicitly excludes Dr. Qadri from the group of ‘bad politicians’ even though he is a politician, he presupposes that ‘judges have personal grudges with all petitioners’ (line 29), ‘courts are selective’ (line 35). Thus he supports his argumentation and opinion.

3.8 Style: variations of syntax, lexicon and sound: The word choice is simple and do not indicate any particular register. There are emotion words e.g. ‘like, dislike, love, hate’ (line 10) which add to the argumentation strategy i.e. to draw upon readers’ feelings. The terms like ‘judicial activism’ are used in a negative and critical manner which is used here and adds to the opinion of the writer. Lastly, an interesting choice of words is adopted to point towards ‘foreign countries’. Simply, pronoun ‘other’ (line 6) is used to refer to ‘foreign countries’, similarly the word ‘home’ (line 4) is used to refer to Pakistan. This word choice is directly in accordance with writer’s opinion and strategy to invoke readers’ emotions.

The syntactic style is typical of newspaper discourse with long sentences, and one or two sentence long paragraphs. The start of text has topicalizations (line 3, 4) which introduce writer’s focus in the beginning. Similarly passive voices are used (e.g. line 4) to topicalize the theme as well as to reduce the negative opinion to surface at start, which gets stronger as the argument develops and ends at strong assertion using modal verb ‘should’ (line 35).

4. Conclusion

Overall, the text counters a dominant discourse in print and electronic media. It tries to shatter the authority of dominant media opinion, and resists to authoritative decision of highest court of the country. During this quest, the writer gets partial success but argumentative strategy appears to be flawed at more than one occasions, as the analysis reveals. The letter tries to introduce a counter discourse through ‘Letters to Editor’ section but apparently fails to do so as data collected from next 13 days (letter was published on 1st March, 2013) has no follow up or reaction on this issue.

References

Kapoor, S. and Botan, C. (1992). Studies Compare How Editors Use Letters. The Masthead 44(1), p. 5.

Richardson, J.E. (2007).  Analysing Newspapers: An approach from Critical Discourse Analysis. Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan.

Van Dijk, T.A. (1993). Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse & Society, 4(2), 249-283.

Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2002). Understanding the Conditions for Public Discourse: four rules for selecting letters to the editor. Journalism Studies, 3(1), 69 –81.

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