A.Zhaparova

Al-Farabi Kazakh National University,

Department of Translation Theory and Methodology

Translation difficulties of metaphors

It stands to reason that, translators face complications and challenge during translation of metaphors, as a metaphor is a stylistic device, a trope, figurative and descriptive language tool. Throughout the history of science, scholars of Translation Studies indicate principal and substantive obstacles of translation metaphors, suggested their own methods and ways of tackling them. Thus, an English professor of translation Peter Newmark in his book named "A textbook of Translation" mentioned сore and mainstream hurdles of translating metaphors.

To put it a nutshell, Peter Newmark introduced seven tactics to convey metaphors into another language:

1. Reproducing the same image in the TL

2. Replacing the image in the SL with a standard TL image which does not clash with the TL culture

3. Translation of metaphor by simile, retaining the image

4. Translation of metaphor (or simile) by simile plus sense, or occasionally metaphor plus sense

5. Conversion of metaphor to sense

6. Deletion. If the metaphor is redundant or serves no practical purpose, there is a case for its deletion, together with its sense component

7. Translation of metaphor by the same metaphor combined with sense. The addition of a gloss or an explanation by the translator is to ensure that the metaphor will be understood {1,107}

Dean of the Graduate School of Translation at Moscow State University, Doctor of Philology, Professor N.Garbovskiy offered 5 types of translation mistakes and their reasons of occurrence. They are as follows.

1. Mistakes, conditioned by misunderstanding of the meaning of the source text

2. Miscomprehension at the level of "sign - concept"

3. Misunderstand at the level of "sign - a complex concept"

4. Lack of understanding at the mark of "sign - judgment "

5. Misconception of an objective situation {2,514-524}

To the mistakes emphasized above by professor N.Garbovskiy, we can add our additional 2 reasons of misconception made at the time of translation.

1. Confusion of ethno cultural peculiarities of metaphors inherent to each nation

2. Incomprehension of author-individual metaphors intrinsic to a poet or a writer.

On the strength of the specificity of the poems, translators must meet certain quality and possess special knowledge and skills. Based on the fact that poems refer to specific genres of literature, it is natural to assume that specialists in the sphere of translation must possess definite literary talent. Along with this, being a poet, you need proper and sure knowledge of the languages (source language and target one), because the reinstatement of the poem on the interlinear will be rather a variation on a theme, but not a translation as such. The fact is that, without knowing the language, it is infeasible and impossible to identify all the subtleties and nuances of meaning and determine what is the characteristic manner of writing of the original author. In addition, translators ought to master their native language and make up sentences in accordance with the rules of grammar, style and vocabulary of the target language. If we talk about other skills necessary to an interpreter or a translator, you should name the accurate hearing, which can capture the music and rhythm of the poem, a vivid imagination, the ability to see and display the image that created by the author in the original, and possession of a word in order to accurately express any thought , the slightest shade of meaning of words.

Translation of poetry, notably its main figure like metaphor is very arduous, crucial, responsible work, which requires careful preparation of an interpreter or a translator. However, the fulfillment of all conditions can not eliminate all the problems of poems translation. Owing to its specificity, the translation of poetry is a process that causes a number of difficulties and problems, the main of which are paradoxical. These common matters should be allocated as follows:

- Preservation of national identity;

- Keeping the spirit and time of the work;

- Choice between accuracy and beauty of translation;

- Preserving basic levels of comprehension: level of recognition, phonemic-phonetic level, grammatical and semantic sense, level of auditory sensation - perception - conceptual.

In the book "Metaphors we live by" written by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, it was written that the conceptual system of human-being’s mind that monitors and oversees how we reflect on and ponder over; the way people conduct themselves is metaphoric in nature. The authors of the book "Metaphors we live by" assume that metaphor as a complex device. We look at the things through the prism of our feelings, emotions, experience. Thus, Therefore, any metaphor has two sides like source and destination. In the metaphor ‘You are warmly welcomed’, the source is ‘sense of touch’ and the destination is ‘friendship’. {3, 10-37}.

In Translation Theory, there are some ways of transfering figurative-expressive means of language.

• Full translation of metaphorical units is implemented, when language and cultural traditions are the same in both languages.

• When grammatical norms of the two languages do not match each other, structural renewal method can be used. It indicates that, when it is impossible to translate metaphor keeping all the rules of grammar, this method is applied.

• When a metaphor does not have an independent distinctive feature, then a metaphor will be changed in terms of semantics and translated into a target language.

• When two languages of metaphorical units are not suited to each other in terms of style, functional method is used in relation to those metaphors.

• When a metaphor in original language has no equivalent in the target language, we have to make fresh and new metaphor again in the target language.

Summarizing all said above, we can notice that, metaphors can be translated by means of the following methods like:

Сoncretization;

Generalization;

Modulation;

Grammatical changes;

Lexical-semantic changes;

Loan translation or calque;

Word-for-word translation;

Antonym translation;

Explication or descriptive translation;

Сompensation

Literature:

1. A textbook of Translation by Peter Newmark, published byPrentice Hall Longman ELT, 1987, - 292p.

2. Theory of Translation by Garbovskiy N.K, published by Moscow University, 2007, - 544p.

3. Metaphors we live by, Authors: G.Lakoff and M.Johnson, London: University of Chicago Press, 2003. - 276 p.