Oksana M. Zhabina

Master student of the Russian Philology and Documentation Science Department of the Tula State Lev Tolstoy Pedagogical University

Tula State Lev Tolstoy Pedagogical University

(Tula, Russia)

Abstract. Metaphor translation is often considered as one of the general problems of “untranslatability”. This is because metaphors are generally associated with indirectness; therefore, it is hard to translate them. Thus, the translator must carefully consider how to translate a metaphor. The article analyzes metaphor translations in Pasternak’s poem "Winter night" using a framework proposed by Peter Newmark. There are seven approaches used for translating metaphors: preserving the metaphorical image if it is understandable and close to native speakers of the target language, replacing the image of the source language with a standard target language image, translating the metaphor by simile, saving the metaphorical image and adding some explanatory information, translating the metaphor by paraphrasing, combining metaphors with the same meaning, deleting the metaphor. The author analyzes the metaphors in the poetic translations of K. Barnes, L. Pasternak-Slater and E. Klein and reveals the principal ways of translating them. The main difficulty of translating Pasternak's metaphor is that in some cases the translation is not accurate regardless of the chosen approach due to a fundamental discrepancy between discourses. Paraphrasing turns out to be the most frequently used approach and simile makes the translation as close to the original as possible. The article notes that the reader of the translation may not understand the literal translation of the metaphor of the source language. However, it is worth noting that the translators of the poem did not neutralize the metaphors, retaining the expressiveness and emotionality of the text. This allows us to conclude that when translating metaphors, the translator may have difficulties due to the lack of an adequate equivalent in the translating language, differences in the realities of the two languages, their cultures and value systems, which inevitably lead to the impossibility of direct translation. However, a translator can always find a translation approach that can convey the meaning of the metaphor as accurately as possible.
Keywords: metaphor, literary text, translation, metaphor translation, comparison, paraphrasing, English.

Full text of the article (PDF)


For citation:Zhabina, OM 2020, ‘Features of the metaphor translation into english in the poem of B. Pasternak "Winter night"’, Tula Scientific Bulletin. History. Linguistics, issue 2 (2), pp. 75–82, URL: http://tula-vestnik.ru/pdf/2020/vipusk_2_15_12_20.pdf (in Russ.)

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