Translation practices at the European Central Bank with reference to metaphors

The European Union institutions represent a complex setting and a specific case of institutional translation. The European Central Bank (ECB) is a particular context as the documents translated belong to the field of economics and, thus, contain many specialised terms and neologisms that pose challenges to translators. This study aims to investigate the translation practices at the ECB, and to analyse their effects on the translated texts. In order to illustrate the way texts are translated at the ECB, the thesis will focus on metaphorical expressions and the conceptual metaphors by which they are sanctioned. Metaphor is often associated with literature and less with specialised texts. However, according to Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) conceptual metaphor theory, our conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical in nature and metaphors are pervasive elements of thought and speech. The corpus compiled comprises economic documents translated at the ECB, mainly from English into Romanian. Using corpus analysis, the most salient metaphorical expressions were identified in the source and target texts and explained with reference to the main conceptual metaphors. Translation strategies are discussed on the basis of a comparison of the source and target texts. The text-based analysis is complemented by questionnaires distributed to translators, which give insights into the institution’s translation practices. As translation is an institutional process, translators have to follow certain guidelines and practices; these are discussed with reference to translators’ agency. A gap was identified in the field of institutional translation. The translation process in the EU institutions has been insufficiently explored, especially regarding the new languages of the European Union. By combining the analysis of the institutional practices, the texts produced in the institution and the translators’ work (by the questionnaires distributed to translators), this thesis intends to bring a contribution to institutional translation and metaphor translation, particularly regarding a new EU language, Romanian.

Metaphors in Hugo Chávez's political discourse:conceptualizing nation, revolution and opposition

This dissertation examines Hugo Chávez's choice of metaphors in his efforts to construct and legitimize his Bolivarian Revolution. It focuses on metaphors drawn from three of the most frequent target domains present in his discourse: the nation, his revolution, and the opposition. The study argues that behind an official discourse of inclusion, Chávez's choice of metaphors contributes to the construction of a polarizing discourse of exclusion in which his political opponents are represented as enemies of the nation.The study shows that Chávez constructs this polarizing discourse of exclusion by combining metaphors that conceptualize: (a) the nation as a person who has been resurrected by his government, as a person ready to fight for his revolution, or as Chávez himself; (b) the revolution as war; and (c) members of the opposition as war combatants or criminals. At the same time, the study shows that by making explicit references in his discourse about the revolution as the continuation of Bolívar's wars of independence, Chávez contributes to represent opponents as enemies of the nation, given that in the Venezuelan collective imaginary Simón Bolívar is the symbol of the nation's emancipation.This research, which covers a period of nine years (from Chávez's first year in office in 1999 through 2007), is part of the discipline of Political Discourse Analysis (PDA). It is anchored both in the theoretical framework provided by the cognitive linguistic metaphor theory developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson described in their book Metaphors We Live By, and in Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) as defined by Jonathan Charteris-Black in his book Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis.The study provides the first comprehensive analysis of metaphors used by Chávez in his political discourse. It builds upon the findings of previous studies on political discourse analysis in Venezuela by showing that Chávez's discourse not only polarizes the country and represents opponents as detractors of national symbols such as Bolívar or his wars of independence (which have been clearly established in previous studies), but also represents political opponents as enemies of the nation.

Assuming identities:the workings of intertextual metaphors in dating ads

In this article I propose an augmented pragmatic framework for interpreting metaphors of identity, built upon Grice's co-operative principle and incorporating Levinson's concept of uptake and Austin's notion of felicity. The framework is applied to a selection of intertextual identity metaphors drawn from The Guardian's dating ad column, ‘Soulmates’. First I provide a detailed exposition of the textual and discursive workings of a small selection of typical fictional metaphors in these dating ads, to show how co-textual selections steer interpretation and contribute to a metaphor's success, or felicity. Then discussion turns to consideration of how these textual and discursive processes might be mapped onto the proposed pragmatic framework of recognition, uptake and felicity.

Metaphors in spoken academic discourse in german and english

Metaphors have been increasingly associated with cognitive functions, which means that metaphors structure how we think and express ourselves. Metaphors are embodied in our basic physical experience, which is one reason why certain abstract concepts are expressed in more concrete terms, such as visible entities, journeys, and other types of movement, spaces etc. This communicative relevance also applies to specialised, institutionalised settings and genres, such as those produced in or related to higher education institutions, among which is spoken academic discourse. A significant research gap has been identified regarding spoken academic discourse and metaphors therein, but also given the fact that with increasing numbers of students in higher education and international research and cooperation e.g. in the form of invited lectures, spoken academic discourse can be seen as nearly omnipresent. In this context, research talks are a key research genre. A mixed methods study has been conducted, which investigates metaphors in a corpus of eight fully transcribed German and English L1 speaker conference talks and invited lectures, totalling to 440 minutes. A wide range of categories and functions were identified in the corpus. Abstract research concepts, such as results or theories are expressed in terms of concrete visual entities that can be seen or shown, but also in terms of journeys or other forms of movement. The functions of these metaphors are simplification, rhetorical emphasis, theory-construction, or pedagogic illustration. For both the speaker and the audience or discussants, anthropomorphism causes abstract and complex ideas to become concretely imaginable and at the same time more interesting because the contents of the talk appear to be livelier and hence closer to their own experience, which ensures the audience’s attention. These metaphor categories are present in both the English and the German sub corpus of this study with similar functions.

Exploration of metaphors used by Indonesian legislators and political elites in the Indonesian sociopolitical domain

This thesis examines the ways Indonesian politicians exploit the rhetorical power of metaphors in the Indonesian political discourse. The research applies the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Metaphorical Frame Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis to textual and oral data. The corpus comprises: 150 political news articles from two newspapers (Harian Kompas and Harian Waspada, 2010-2011 edition), 30 recordings of two television news and talk-show programmes (TV-One and Metro-TV), and 20 interviews with four legislators, two educated persons and two laymen. For this study, a corpus of written bahasa Indonesia was also compiled, which comprises 150 texts of approximately 439,472 tokens. The data analysis shows the potential power of metaphors in relation to how politicians communicate the results of their thinking, reasoning and meaning-making through language and discourse and its social consequences. The data analysis firstly revealed 1155 metaphors. These metaphors were then classified into the categories of conventional metaphor, cognitive function of metaphor, metaphorical mapping and metaphor variation. The degree of conventionality of metaphors is established based on the sum of expressions in each group of metaphors. Secondly, the analysis revealed that metaphor variation is influenced by the broader Indonesian cultural context and the natural and physical environment, such as the social dimension, the regional, style and the individual. The mapping system of metaphor is unidirectionality. Thirdly, the data show that metaphoric thought pervades political discourse in relation to its uses as: (1) a felicitous tool for the rhetoric of political leaders, (2) part of meaning-making that keeps the discourse contexts alive and active, and (3) the degree to which metaphor and discourse shape the conceptual structures of politicians‟ rhetoric. Fourthly, the analysis of data revealed that the Indonesian political discourse attempts to create both distance and solidarity towards general and specific social categories accomplished via metaphorical and frame references to the conceptualisations of us/them. The result of the analysis shows that metaphor and frame are excellent indicators of the us/them categories which work dialectically in the discourse. The acts of categorisation via metaphors and frames at both textual and conceptual level activate asymmetrical concepts and contribute to social and political hierarchical constructs, i.e. WEAKNESS vs.POWER, STUDENT vs. TEACHER, GHOST vs. CHOSEN WARRIOR, and so on. This analysis underscores the dynamic nature of categories by documenting metaphorical transfers between, i.e. ENEMY, DISEASE, BUSINESS, MYSTERIOUS OBJECT and CORRUPTION, LAW, POLITICS and CASE. The metaphorical transfers showed that politicians try to dictate how they categorise each other in order to mobilise audiences to act on behalf of their ideologies and to create distance and solidarity.

Metaphors of identity in dating ads and newspaper articles

This article investigates metaphors of identity in dating ads and in two types of newspaper writing, 'hard' and 'soft' news articles. It focuses on issues of textualization and processing, and particularly on the role of cotext in decoding metaphors. Taking a pragmatic approach founded in the cooperative principle, it argues that the maxims of quality and relation play related but separable roles in the interpretation of identity metaphors; and that this process is guided and constrained by cotextual selections in the environment of the metaphorical term. The particular kinds of cotextual guidance provided by the writer are seen to vary according to genre-driven issues. These include the purpose and stylistic conventions of the genre in which the metaphor occurs and the circumstances under which the text is composed and read. Differing functional motivations are suggested for the use of identity metaphors in each of the genres considered. © Walter de Gruyter 2007.

Maritime expressions:a corpus based exploration of maritime metaphors

This study uses a purpose-built corpus to explore the linguistic legacy of Britain’s maritime history found in the form of hundreds of specialised ‘Maritime Expressions’ (MEs), such as TAKEN ABACK, ANCHOR and ALOOF, that permeate modern English. Selecting just those expressions commencing with ’A’, it analyses 61 MEs in detail and describes the processes by which these technical expressions, from a highly specialised occupational discourse community, have made their way into modern English. The Maritime Text Corpus (MTC) comprises 8.8 million words, encompassing a range of text types and registers, selected to provide a cross-section of ‘maritime’ writing. It is analysed using WordSmith analytical software (Scott, 2010), with the 100 million-word British National Corpus (BNC) as a reference corpus. Using the MTC, a list of keywords of specific salience within the maritime discourse has been compiled and, using frequency data, concordances and collocations, these MEs are described in detail and their use and form in the MTC and the BNC is compared. The study examines the transformation from ME to figurative use in the general discourse, in terms of form and metaphoricity. MEs are classified according to their metaphorical strength and their transference from maritime usage into new registers and domains such as those of business, politics, sports and reportage etc. A revised model of metaphoricity is developed and a new category of figurative expression, the ‘resonator’, is proposed. Additionally, developing the work of Lakov and Johnson, Kovesces and others on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), a number of Maritime Conceptual Metaphors are identified and their cultural significance is discussed.

Teoría y práctica del neobarroco en Severo Sarduy

This dissertation analyzes the theory and practice of the Cuban postmodern writer Severo Sarduy (1937–1993) from his early adult years in Cuba to his exile period in Paris, France, where he lived until his death. By studying his narrative through the light of his theoretical essays, this paper demonstrates that the author created his own type of reading model—from and for Sarduy. His literary work is influenced by three major elements: (post)structuralism, psychoanalysis, and Buddhism, which combined form what Sarduy himself called the Neobarroque style. The Sarduyan writing is a transgressive exercise expressed through his concept of simulación. This style breaks with the traditional art concept of mimesis (the representation of reality in the western world), and therefore with the correspondence between the signifier and the signified. Sarduy does not intend to represent reality but to go beyond it, achieving by his technique of signifying exhaustion to represent absence itself. The Neobarroque of Severo Sarduy is an aesthetic of the empty signifier based on the reckless expenditure, and ultimately exhaustion, of the artifices of language that precipitates in a signifier chain towards the infinite. His language does not transmit a message but it signifies itself, that is, a means without an end. Paradoxically, this signifier chain produces an excess of metaphors beyond the material limits of language and its support, the page. The space beyond language is the hipertelic technique inherited by Sarduy from his literary master, José Lezama Lima. This is also the empty space of no signification or nonsense in which occurs the depersonalization of the speaking subject; in Buddhist terminology this becomes the dissolution of the ego. The Sarduyan language is determined by a Lacanian psychoanalytic erotic drive (pulsion) known as the Barroquean desire, a death drive which directly relates to the exile condition of the author. But the genesis of this desire lies in a primordial desire of encounter with his origin: mother, maternal language, paradise, God. That is the reason why Sarduy not only poses an aesthetic question but also an ontological one. This other dimension of the Sarduyan writing is based on a liberating drive that permeates all his work—an ontological liberation expressed through language. The empty space created in the text provides the subject with the possibility of fusion with the all. Ultimately, Sarduy strives for a language that goes beyond the symbolic limits towards a place of constant dissolution, evanesce, and death-horror vacui. This corroborates the Sarduyan statement: “la simulación enuncia el vacío y la muerte.”

CERAMICS IN BRITAIN (1840-90): MEANINGS AND METAPHORS

The intention of this thesis, “Ceramics in Britain (1840–90): Meanings and Metaphors” is to present new approaches for interpreting ceramics in nineteenth-century Britain by situating, problematizing, and contextualizing pottery and porcelain in the popular debates of the day within the methodologies of material culture, design, cultural and art histories. I ask how did ceramics—portable, functional, and often decorative objects—contribute to shaping modes of experiences? Crockery, tableware and blue-white-porcelain, admittedly largely mediated in texts and paintings, are at the centre of this research to examine how they imposed symbolism and influenced the engagement of their subjects beyond their intended meanings and functions. This thesis tracks a common rhetoric shared by writers and artists across genres and understood by readers and viewers: crockery in the cupboard, on the mantel, the table or the floor were popular motifs exemplifying class, gender, character, etiquette, and taste. This thesis also seeks to map ceramics’ relations with other objects and people depicted. Their meanings and metaphors changed, depending on their exchange with other objects in the room and who uses them. The conventions of representing ceramics dictated a particular grammar that writers and artists used, critiqued, discarded or personalized. The examination of ceramics mediated in text and image especially in comparison with extant objects invites a deeper probing of both material culture and artistic practice, which helps to situate the agency of the ceramic objects themselves. Also this thesis, in attempt to explore new methodological approaches for ceramic studies, examines the social life of the mid-Victorian relief-moulded “Minster” Jug in the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. The product originating in Staffordshire in 1843 and exported to the colonies holds significance due to its multiple life histories. Viewing the “Minster” through the lenses of curator, collector, consumer, and critic its layered lives unfold to reveal the protocols of museum praxis as well as important aspects of mid-nineteenth-century British society related to design reform, gender, imperialism and consumption patterns. This thesis contends that the British experienced ceramics in sometimes unexpected ways, unrelated to their original purpose, such as tools of violence or containers of solace, and transformative fantasy.

Sweat Lodges in Iron Age Iberian Peninsula: New Data, Typologies and Interpretations

Three questions on the study of NO Iberian Peninsula sweat lodges are posed. First, the new sauna of Monte Ornedo (Cantabria), the review of the one of Armea (Ourense), and the Cantabrian pedra formosa type are discussed. Second, the known types of sweat lodges are reconsidered underlining the differences between the Cantabrian and the Douro - Minho groups as these differences contribute to a better assessment of the saunas located out of those territories, such as those of Monte Ornedo or Ulaca. Third, a richer record demands a more specific terminology, a larger use of archaeometric analysis and the application of landscape archaeology or art history methodologies. In this way the range of interpretation of the sweat lodges is opened, as an example an essay is proposed that digs on some already known proposals and suggests that the saunas are material metaphors of wombs whose rationale derives from ideologies and ritual practices of Indo-European tradition.

Technical metaphor in Spanish-English translation of the fields of blindness, fatigue, and the spiritual world

The correspondence in the Spanish-English translation is analyzed of three different fields of technical metaphors based upon blindness, fatigue, and the spiritual world. Some terms have been left aside that under the appearance of metaphors were mere samples of no-deviated language or cases of homonymy. The study reveals a higher presence of the metaphor in the Spanish language in the three fields of study, although the English language also shows a high index of metaphors. In between metaphors and non-metaphors, we find a lack of metaphorical equilibrium between Spanish and English in certain cases, which is a sign of the different perception of the reality. Finally, the conclusions shed light on the meaning of these words: blind, annoyance, fatigue, antifading, core, angels, espectrum, phantom, ghost, magic, postmortem, dead, etc.

Enhancing business English terminology through concept mapping

Given the need of a growing internationalization of business, to have a good command of English is, most of the times important for the development of technical (specific) competences. It is, thus, critical that professionals use accurate terminology to set grounds for a well-succeeded communication. Furthermore, business communication is increasingly moving to ICT-mediated sets and professionals have to be able to promptly adjust to these needs, resorting to trustworthy online information sources, but also using technologies that better serve their business purposes. In this scenario, the main objective of this study is to find evidence as to the utility of concept mapping as a teaching and learning strategy for the appropriation of business English terminology, enabling students to use English more efficiently as language of communication in business context. This study was based on a case study methodology, mainly of exploratory nature. Participants were students (n= 30) enrolled in the subject English Applied to Management II at Águeda School of Technology and Management – University of Aveiro (2013/14 edition). They were asked to create and peer review two concept maps (cmaps), one individually and another in pairs. The data gathered were treated and analysed resorting qualitative (content analysis) and to quantitative (descriptive statistical analysis) techniques. Results of the data analysis unveil that the use of a collaborative concept mapping tool promotes the development of linguistic competences as to the use of business terminology, but also of communication and collaboration competences. Besides, it was also a very important motivation element in the students’ engagement with the subject content.

Le lion, l’étoile y l’hélice: estudio descriptivo de la metáfora en textos técnicos franceses del ámbito de la automoción y de su traducción al español

Technical texts are usually characterized by the use of terminology, and they are said to be clear, concise, precise and objective. It is terminology which is normally considered one of the most important difficulties to understand specialized concepts because they are expressed by means of this terminology. Nevertheless, there are other linguistic and cognitive elements which are frequently used to express specialized concepts, for instance, metaphors. In this paper we aim to analyze the use of cognitive metaphors in a corpus of French semi-specialized technical texts and to consider whether the use of these metaphors could be a problem should these metaphors have to be translated into Spanish.

Compte rendu de Kockaert, Hendrik J. & Steurs, Frieda (Eds.). (2015). Handbook of terminology (HOT), vol. 1. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 558 p.

Paru dans Parallèles 28/2, p. 105-108