AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, Volume 7, Number 1. February 2023 Pp. 70-100
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol7no1.6
Cultural Filtering of Metaphor Translating: A Cognitive Science Perspective
Mohammed I. Alghbban[i]
Department of Modern Languages and Translation
College of Languages and Translation, King Saud University
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Corresponding Author: malghbban@ksu.edu.sa
Zouheir Maalej
Independent Researcher
Retired Professor from King Saud University
Mail: 188, Al-Jareed Road, Sakiet Ezzit, 3032, Sfax, Tunisia
Received:11/21/2022 Accepted:01/22/2023 Published: 02/24/2023
Abstract:
The driving force of the current research runs as follows: Since metaphor is a carrier of thought, culture will be argued to act as a filter in metaphor translating, precluding unexpected, unfamiliar, and shocking knowledge both linguistically and conceptually from being smuggled into the target language and culture. The study aims to show that metaphor translating can be best dealt with from a cultural perspective, isolating cultural knowledge as a guide for decision-making in translating. The significance of the study lies in the fact that metaphor translating should not be monitored by ready-made procedures but should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, with consequences for ready-made procedures and new paths followed in translating. The study will seek to address the following question: How does cultural filtering take affect metaphor translating? The article adopts a three-step framework: (i) measuring cultural knowledge’s compatibility, or lack of it, carried by Source Language metaphor and its target language translation, (ii) triggering of cultural filtering in case of incompatibility, and (iii) comparing cultures based on Hiraga’s four-scenario scheme to assess the position of the two cultures in presence. Cultural filtering will be illustrated through concrete examples in disciplines such as politics, economics, and advertising across English and Arabic and written and pictorial metaphors.
Keywords: cognitive linguistics, cultural filtering, metaphor translating, re-conceptualizing, smuggling knowledge
Cite as: Alghbban, M. I., & Maalej, Z. (2023). Cultural Filtering of Metaphor Translating: A Cognitive Science Perspective.
Arab World English Journal for Translation & Literary Studies 7 (1). 70-100.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol7no1.6
References
Al-Harrasi, A. (2001). Metaphor in (Arabic-into-English) translation with specific reference to metaphorical concepts and expressions in political discourse, (Unpublished Doctoral dissertation). Aston University, Great Britain.
Al-Sowaidi, B. T., & Banda, M. F. (2021). Translating conceptual Qur’anic metaphor: A congo-translational approach. Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 10(1), 1-13.
Alvarez, A. (1993). On translating metaphor. Meta, 38(3), 479-490.
Al-Zou’bi, A. I., & M. Kanakri, M. (2020). The translatability of metaphor in political speeches from English into Arabic. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 7(3), 78-87. doi:10.30845/ijll.v7n3p7
Ashuja’a1, A. A., Almatari, S. M., & Alward, A. S. (2019). Exploring strategies of translating metaphor from English into Arabic concerning scientific texts. International Journal of Comparative Literature & Translation Studies, 26-38. http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.7n.3p.26
Atkinson, D. (2010). Extended, embodied cognition and second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 31(5), 599-622.
Bender, A. (2020). What early Sapiens cognition can teach us: Untangling cultural influences on human cognition across time. Frontiers in Psychology, 11(99), 1-6.
Bender, A., & S. Beller, S. (2016). Current perspectives on cognitive diversity. Frontiers in Psychology, PERSPECTIVE, 7(509), 1-7.
Charteris-Black, J. (2004). Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Boyd, R. (1993). Metaphor and theory change: What is ‘metaphor’ a metaphor for? In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd ed., pp. 481-532). London/New York/ Melbourne: C.U.P.
Burmakovaa, E. A., & Marugina, N. I. (2014). Cognitive approach to metaphor translation in literary discourse. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 154, 527 – 533.
Catford, J. C. (1965). A linguistic theory of translation: An essay in applied linguistics. London, Oxford University Press.
Chiao, J. Y. (2010). At the frontier of cultural neuroscience: Introduction to the special issue. SCAN, 5,109-110. doi:10.1093/scan/nsq064
Chiao, J. Y., & Ambady, N. (2007). Cultural neuroscience: Parsing universality and diversity across levels of analysis. In S. Kitayama & D. Cohen (Eds.), Handbook of cultural psychology (pp. 237–54). New York/London: The Guilford Press.
Chui, K. (2011). Conceptual metaphors in gestures. Cognitive Linguistics, 22(3), 437-458.
Cienki, A. (1998). Metaphoric gestures and some of their relations to verbal metaphoric expressions. In: J-P Koenig (Ed.), Discourse and cognition: Bridging the gap (pp. 189-204). Stanford, California: CSLI Publications.
Crofts, M. (1988). Translating metaphors. ARAL, 11(1), 47-53.
Dagut, M. B. (1987). More about the translatability of metaphor. Babel, 33(2).77-83.
D’Andrade, R. G. (1981). The cultural part of cognition. Cognitive Science, 5, 179-195.
Evans, N., & Levinson, S. C. (2009). The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32(5), 429-448. DOI:10.1017/S0140525X0999094X
Feldman, J. A. (2006). From molecule to metaphor: A neural theory of language. Cambridge, Mass./London: A Bradford Book/The MIT Press.
Feng, T., & Wang, F. (2020). Translation strategies of metaphors in political texts – a case study of the report on the work of the government 2020. European Journal of Literature, Language and Linguistics Studies, 4(2), 1-8.
Fillmore, C. J. (1975). An alternative to checklist theories of meaning. Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 123-131.
Fillmore, C. J. (1976). Frame semantics and the nature of language. Annals New York Academy of Sciences, 20-32.
Fiske, A. P., & Haslam, N. (1996). Social cognition is thinking about relationships. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 5(5), 143-148.
Forceville, C. (1996). Pictorial metaphor in advertising. London: Routledge.
Forceville, C. (2009). Non-verbal and multimodal metaphor in a cognitivist framework Agendas for research. In C. Forceville & E. Urios-Aparisi (Eds.), Multimodal metaphor (pp. 19-42). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Forceville, C. (2016). The FORCE and BALANCE schemas in journey metaphor animations. In: C. Fernandes (Ed.), Multimodality and performance (pp. 8-22). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Frith, C. D., & Frith, U. (2008). Implicit and explicit processes in social cognition. Neuron Perspective, 60, 1-8.
Gallese, V., Keysers, C., & Rizzolatti, G. (2004). A unifying view of the basis of social cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(9), 1-8.
Ghazala, H. S. (2012). Translating the metaphor: A cognitive stylistic conceptualization (English – Arabic). World Journal of English Language, 2(4), 1-12.
Gibbs, R. W. Jr. (1994). The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding. Cambridge: CUP.
Gibbs, R. W. Jr. (1999a). Taking metaphors out of our heads and putting them into the cultural world. In R. W. Gibbs Jr. & G. J. Steen (eds.), Metaphor in cognitive linguistics (pp. 145-166). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Gibbs, R. W. Jr. (1999b). Researching metaphor. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (pp. 29-47). Cambridge: CUP.
Gilpin, A. (1986). Dictionary of economics and financial markets. London: Butterworths.
Han, S. (2015). Understanding cultural differences in human behavior: A cultural neuroscience approach. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 3, 68-72.
Han, S., & Northoff, G. (2008). Culturesensitive neural substrates of human cognition: A transcultural neuroimaging approach. Nature Reviews: Neuroscience Perspectives, 9, 646-654.
Han, S. et al. (2013). A cultural neuroscience approach to the biosocial nature of the human brain. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 335–59.
Hanić, J., Pavlović, T., & Jahić, A. (2016). Translating emotion-related metaphors: A cognitive approach. ExELL (Explorations in English Language and Linguistics), 4(2), 87-101. DOI: 10.1515/exell-2017-0008
Hiraga, M. K. (1991). Metaphor and comparative cultures. In: P. G. Fendos, Jr. (Ed.), Cross-cultural Communication: East and West (vol. III) (pp. 149-166). Taiwan: T’ai Ch’eng Publishing in Tainan.
Hong, W., & Rossi, C. (2021). The cognitive turn in metaphor translation studies: A critical overview. Journal of Translation Studies, 5(2), 83-115.
Jensen, A. (2005). Coping with a metaphor: A cognitive approach to translating metaphor. Hermes, Journal of Linguistics, 35, 183-209.
Johnson, M. (1987). The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.
Khatin-Zadeh, O., Farsani, D., & Banaruee, H. (2022). A study of the use of iconic and metaphoric gestures with motion-based, static space-based, static object-based, and static event-based statements. Behavioral Sciences, 12(239), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs12070239
Kheovichai, B. (2015). Metaphor in business English. Silpakorn University Journal of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts, 15(1), 93-130.
Kirsh, D. (2006). Distributed cognition: A methodological note. Pragmatics & Cognition, 14(2), 249-262.
Kitayama, S., & Park, J. (2010). Cultural neuroscience of the self: understanding the social grounding of the brain. SCAN, 5,111-129. doi:10.1093/scan/nsq052
Kitayama, S., & Salvador, C. E. (2017). Culture embrained: Going beyond the nature-nurture dichotomy. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(5) 841–854.
Kolstad, A. (2015). How culture shapes mind, neurobiology and behaviour. British Journal of Education, Society and Behavioural Science, 6(4), 255-274.
Kövecses, Z. (1999). Metaphor: Does it constitute or reflect cultural models? In R. W. Gibbs Jr. & G. J. Steen (eds.), Metaphor in cognitive linguistics (pp. 167-188). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Kovács, É. (n.d.). Conceptual metaphors in popular business discourse. Digitalizálta: Miscolchi Egyetem Könyvtár Levéltár, Múzeum, 69-80.
Kövecses, Z. (2005). Metaphor in culture: Universality and variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G. (2008). The neural theory of metaphor. In R. W. Gibbs, Jr. (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought (pp. 17-38). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.
Larson, M. L. (1984). Meaning-based translation: A guide to cross-language equivalence. New York: University Press of America.
Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, B. (2010). Re-conceptualization and the emergence of discourse meaning as a theory of translation. In B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk & M. Thelen (Eds.), Meaning in translation (pp. 105-147). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Maalej, Z. (1990). Metaphor in political and economic texts, (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation). University of Tunis, Tunisia.
Maalej, Z. (2001). Processing pictorial metaphor in advertising: A cross-cultural perspective. Academic Research, 1(1), 19-42.
Maalej, Z. (2003). Conceptual metaphor as persuasion, with special reference to consumer advertising: A cognitive semantics account. In M. Triki & A. Sellami-Baklouti (Eds.),
Pragmatic perspectives on persuasion (pp. 121-147). Sfax, Tunisia: Faculty of Letters and Humanities.
Maalej, Z. (2007). Doing critical discourse analysis with the contemporary theory of metaphor: Towards a discourse model of metaphor. In C. Hart & D. Lukeš (Eds.), Cognitive linguistics in critical discourse studies: Application and theory (pp. 132-158). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press.
Maalej, Z. (2008). Translating metaphor between unrelated cultures: A cognitive-pragmatic perspective. Sayyab Translation Journal, 1, 60-82.
Maalej, Z. (2014). Persuasion and counter-persuasion of visual metaphor in consumer advertising. In D. Yankova (Ed.), Cross-linguistic interaction: Translation, contrastive and cognitive studies: Liber Amicorum in Honour of Prof. Bistra Alexieva (pp. 329-347). Sofia: St. Kliment Ohridski University Press.
Mandelblit, N. (1995). The cognitive view of metaphor and its implications for translation theory. In Translation and meaning PART 3 (pp. 483-495). Maastricht: Universitaire Press.
Mason, K. (1982). Metaphor and translation. Babel, 28,140-149.
Massey, G. (2021). Re-framing conceptual metaphor translation research in the age of neural machine translation: Investigating translators’ added value with products and processes. Training, Language and Culture, 5(1), 37-56.
Massey, G., & Ehrensberger-Dow, M. (2017). Translating conceptual metaphor: The processes of managing interlingual asymmetry. Research in Language, 15(2), 173-189. DOI: 10.1515/rela-2017-0011
Messaris, P. (1997). Visual persuasion: The role of images in advertising. London: Sage Publications.
Newmark, P. (1980). The translation of metaphor. Babel, 16(2), 93-100.
Newmark, P. (1995). A textbook of translation. New York/London: Phoenix ELT.
Nida, E. A. (1964). Linguistics and ethnology in translation-problems. In D. Hymes (Ed.), Language in culture and society: A reader in linguistics and anthropology (pp. 90-97). New York: Harper and Row.
Nydell, M. K. (2012). Understanding Arabs: A contemporary guide to Arab society. Boston/London: Intercultural Press.
Park, D. C., & Huang, C. M. (2010). Culture wires the brain: A cognitive neuroscience perspective. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(4), 391–400. doi:10.1177/1745691610374591.
Quinn, N. (1991). The cultural basis of metaphor. In J. W. Fernández (Ed.), Beyond metaphor: The theory of tropes in anthropology (pp. 57-93). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Ramadan, S., Abu Radwan, S. A., & Shuqair, H. (2020). Problems in translating metaphors in political campaign speeches. Translation Studies, 17(2), 257-278.
Rojo López, A. M., & Orts Llopis, M. A. (2015). The financial language used to communicate the same socio-economic events in English and Spanish press through metaphors and metonymies. ESP Today, 3(2), 216-237.
Safarnejad, F., Ho-Abdullah, I., & Mat Awal, N. (2014). Cultural basis of metaphors translation: Case of emotions in Persian and English. Asian Social Science, 10(7), 107-118.
Samaniego Fernández, E. (2011). Translation studies and the cognitive theory of metaphor. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 9(1), 262–279.
Schaffner, C. (2004). Metaphor and translation: Some implications of a cognitive approach. Journal of Pragmatics, 36, 1253-1269.
Schäffner, C., & Shuttleworth, M. (2015). Metaphor in translation: Possibilities for process research. In M. Ehrensberger-Dow, S. Gӧpferich, & S. O’Brien (Eds.), Interdisciplinarity in translation and interpreting process research (pp. 95-108). John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Shore, B. (1996). Culture in mind: Cognition, culture, and the problems of meaning. New York/Oxford: OUP.
Shuttleworth, M. (2014). Translation studies and metaphor studies: Possible paths of interaction between two well-established disciplines. In D. R. Miller & E. Monti (Eds.), Tradurre figure / Translating figurative language (pp. 53-65). Bologna: CeSLiC, ‘Quaderni del CeSLiC, Atti di Convegni.’
Semin, G. R., & E. R. Smith (2002). Interfaces of social psychology with situated and embodied cognition. Cognitive Systems Research, 3, 385-396.
Siltanen, S. A. (1981). The persuasiveness of metaphor: A replication and extension. The Southern Speech Communication Journal, 47, 67-83.
Snell-Hornby, M. (1988/1995). Translation studies: An integrated approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Sopory, P., & Dillard, J. P. (2002a). Figurative language and persuasion. In: J. P. Dillard and M. Pfau (Eds.), The persuasion handbook: Developments in theory and practice (pp. 407-426). London: Sage Publications.
Sopory, P., & Dillard, J. P. (2002b). The persuasive effects of metaphor: A meta-analysis. Human Communication Research, 28(3), 382-419.
Spurrett, D., & Cowley, S. J. (2004). How to do things with words: Infants, utterance-activity and distributed cognition. Language Sciences, 26, 443-466.
Tabakowska, E. (1993). Cognitive linguistics and poetics of translation. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
Thibodeau, P. H., Matlock, T., & Flusberg, S. J. (2019). The role of metaphor in communication and thought. Compass, 1-18.
Thomas, A. (2010). Culture and cultural standards. In A. Thomas, E-U. Kinast, & S. Schroll-Machl (Eds.), Handbook of intercultural communication and cooperation: Vol. 1: Basics and areas of application (2nd rev. ed., pp. 17-27). Göttingen and Oakville: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht GmbH and Co.
Tomasello, M., & Rakoczy, H. (2003). What makes human cognition unique? From individual to shared to collective intentionality. Mind & Language, 18, 121-147.
Tomoni, B. (2012). Conceptual metaphors in financial discourse: The ‘Romanian Way’ of thinking, speaking and writing finances. Selected Papers from UK-CLA Meetings, 1, 146 – 163. http://uk-cla.org.uk/proceedings
Turner, M. (1991). Reading minds: The study of English in the age of cognitive science. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wilson, M. (2002). Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9(4), 625-636.
Yu, N. (2003). Metaphor, body, and culture: The Chinese understanding of gallbladder and courage. Metaphor and Symbol, 18(1), 13-31.
Yu, N. (2009). Nonverbal and multimodal manifestation of metaphors and metonymies: A case study. In C. Forceville & E. Urios-Aparisi (Eds.), Multimodal metaphor (pp. 119-143). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.