ON TRANSLATING METAPHOR

Antonia Alvarez
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, Spain

Résumé
La métaphore constitue 1’ un des principaux problémes auxquels faitface le traducteur
littéraire. Par son importance et sa fréquence, elle s’ impose comme un élément essentiel du
processus traductionnel. Mais les théoriciens lui ont accordé peu d’attention, probablement
á cause des difficultés inhérentes a l' élaboration d’une théorie de la traduction des méta-
phores. Le présent árdele se conteniera done de f aire des généralisations sur ce type de traduc
tion. Le cadre d’analyse adopté est un texte d’ Angela Cárter, la métaphore étant au coeur du
processus créatif che? cet auteur.

Abstract
One ofthe main difficulties a literary translator has toface is metaphorical language.
In view of its importance and frequeney it constitutes an essential element in translation pro
cess, hut it has received little attention by translation theorists, perhaps because ofthe obsta-
cles to reach some kind oftheory of metaphor translation. That’s why we’ll try to make some
generalizations on translating metaphor, using as a frame to develop our analysis a text by
Angela Cárter, since metaphor is a true, recurrent médium for her artistic visión of litera-
ture. As most crides say, in her baroque use of imagery, metaphor is at the heart of Cárter s
Creative process and has a special claim for the reader’s attention.

AN ATTEMPT TO DEFINE METAPHOR

A Revisión of Critical Approaches
The line between literal and metaphorical language is not clear since some metaphors
are in the process of dying and becoming part of common language. In Eva Feder Kittay’s
words, “because of the dynamic inherent in language the metaphorical becomes literal and
the language becomes metaphorical.” (1987: 22) This is the case in the example:
(1) “the hair was dyed as a brave canary yellow” (el pelo, teñido de un osado amarillo
canario)', the metaphorical term canary collocated with yellow is lexicalized since this is
why we refer to a specific colour.

Other example of dead metaphor is:

(2) “Her shoes are all that anchor her to the ground” (Eran los zapatos lo único que la ancla
ba al suelo). Both examples are also lexicalized in Spanish.

Lakoff and Johnson differentiate the literal from the metaphorical use of language:
we understand experience metaphorically “when we use an expression/rom one ___domain of
experience to structure experience in another ___domain,” for instance, the original metaphor:
(3) “the hair. . . giving the general impression of a very expensive ice-cream sundae” (el pelo. . .
daba la impresión de un enorme y carísimo helado de crema);

Language which' is literal “speaks of how we understand our experience directly,

when we see it as being structured directly from interaction with and in our environ-
ment.” (1980: 230)

Meta, XXXVIII, 3. 1993

480 Meta, XXXVIII, 3, 1993

Metaphorical talk, says Cooper (1986: 140), “effects a familiarity or ‘intimacy’

between speakers, and between them and their work;” we may utter a metaphor to stimu-
late an image:
(4) “With her hair coiled in loop upon serpentine loop on her head” (con el cabello enrosca
do en volutas serpentinas'),

to provoque an interesting comparison:

(5) “An oíd creature with hair like a nest ofpetrified snakes” (Una anciana criatura con un
peinado que parecía un nido de serpientes petrificadas),

or to register a beautiful tum of phrase:

(6) “the walls of this passage shuddered and sighed at first almost imperceptibly, so that I
mistook it for my own breathing” (las paredes del pasadizo se estremecían y susurraban,
casi imperceptibles al principio, de modo que pensé que eran los sonidos de mi propia
respiración). The inanimate noun walls is personified.

Earl R. Mac Cormac defines metaphorical language as that which “forces us to

wonder, compare, note similarities; it seeks to create new suggestive ways of perceiving
and understanding the world.” (1985: 78) A good example would be this extremely poetic
metaphor:
(7) “The rocks between which I am pressed as between pages of a gigantic book seemed to
me to be composed of silence; I am pressed between the leaves of a book of silence” (Las
rocas que me comprimen como las páginas de un libro gigantesco me parecen compuestas
de silencio; estoy aplastada entre las hojas de un libro de silencio).

In Aristotle’s terms, metaphor is “the mark of genius” (Poetics 1459a), which can
be illustrated with the example:
(8) “As she swaycd in shoes so high... they transformed her into a bird plumed with furs"
(Cimbreándose sobre aquellos zapatos tan altos. . . se transformaba en un pájaro con pluma
je de pieles). There is also a personificaron of shoes, and the adjectival phrase plumed with
furs is transformed into a prepositional phrase con plumaje de pieles since there is no syntac-
tical equivalence in Spanish.

Menachem Dagut defines metaphor as “an individual Creative flash of imagination

fusing disparate categories of experience in a powerfully meaningful semantic anomaly.”
(1987: 77) In the following expressive, totally original metaphor:
(9) “Reading is just as Creative an activity as writing and most intelectual development de-
pends upon new readings of oíd texts. I am putting new wine in oíd bottles, especially if the
pressure of the new wine makes the oíd bottles expiado." (Cárter 1983: 69) The semantic
field to which wine and bottles belong is, of course, a different one from writing; thus, disparate
categories of experience are fused.

“The Platonist and the positivist,” according to Richard Rorty, “share a reductionist
view of metaphor: they think metaphors are either paraphrasable or useless for the one
serious purpose which language has, namely, representing reality. By contrast, the roman-
tics have an expansionist view: they think metaphor is strange, mystic, wonderfuL
Romantics attribute metaphor to a mysterious faculty called imagination, a faculty which
they suppose to be at the very centre of the self, the deep heart’s core.” (1986: 6) The
following example supports the romantics’ concept:
ON TRANSLATING METAPHOR 481

(10) She had been the dream itself made flesh though the flesh I knew her in was not flesh
itself but only a moving picture of flesh, real but not substantial {Había sido el sueño mismo
hecho carne, aunque la carne que yo conocía de ella no era carne verdadera sino sólo una
película de carne, real pero no sustancial).

Richards was the first to baptize the two ideas active together in metaphor. He
called them tenor and vehicle. The latter is “the idea conveyed by the literal meanings of
the words used metaphorically,” and the former is “the idea conveyed by the vehicle”
(1936: 96):
Object Vehicle Tenor
(The ítem described) (Image) (Ground of transfer)
leg of a person ------ leg of a table functional similarity
eye of a person ------ eye of a needle formal similarity
beast ------------------ he is a beast evaluative similarity

For M. Blacks, a metaphor is not an isolated term, but a sentence. He calis the
metaphorical sentence frame and the words used metaphorically focas or incongruent
constituent: “the frame imposes extensión of meaning upon the focal words” (1962: 39):
(11) “I’d forgotten the omniverous inscrutability of the sea, how it nibbles the earth with a
mouth of water” (Ya no recordaba la inescrutabilidad omnívora del mar, cómo roe la tierra
con una boca de agua). To understand this metaphor we need the frame of the sentence: the
sea is the one which nibbles (roe la tierra).

Brooke-Rose defines metaphor as “any identification of one thing with another, any
replacement of the more usual word or phrase by another” (1965: 17), as it happens in:
(12) “under a sky fissured with artificial fire” (bajo un cielo fisurado por un fuego artificial).
This is not the usual word both either in English or in Spanish.

Types of metaphors
Peter Newmark thinks that the purpose of a metaphor 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,” (1981: 84) and classifies it in five different types:
H dead metaphors are distinguished from others only in degree. They are lexicalized
metaphors: the arm of the chair;
H cliché metaphors have already become automatic, not expressive at all because of
excessive use: leave no stone unturned (no deja títere con cabeza);
H stock metaphors are very common, but they are not yet fossilized: a ray ofhope;
H recent metaphors have not been used in the past. E.g.: Irangate. There are many in
Computer language: software, hardware, a word processor;
H original metaphors are poetic metaphors invented for a specific expression or occa-
sion: The valley was embroidered with flowers.

Dagut does not agree with Newmark’s classification, since “the use of such qualify-
ing epithets as original metaphor (= metaphor stricto sensu) and dead metaphor (= pol-
yseme or idiom), is really a confusing illusion. What such qualifiers do is to give the
impression of a single metaphorical continuum made up of differing quantitative degrees
of one and the same linguistic phenomenon... in actual fact, metaphor proper is qualita-
tively distinguished from its derivatives.” (1987: 77)
482 Meta, XXXVIII, 3, 1993

TRANSLATABILITY OF METAPHOR FROM SL TO TL

In spite of the lack of research on the subject of the translatability of metaphor,
there are some studies by translation theorists about this question:
Kloepfer (1967) supports the simplistic approach, saying that there is no problem in
translating metaphor; for instance in
(13) “There was a drugged smile on her face” (con una sonrisa drogada). Nevertheless, some
structural changes have taken place in this translation:

Transposition from finite clause — ► prepositional phrase

In the existential sentence (unstressed there) the thematic position is not empty but
filled with a NP as S -she preceding the V had (got). Thus the translation con instead of
había.
Kirsten Masón also writes that it is useless to establish a theory for metaphor trans
lation: “there can only be a theory of translation; the problems involved in translating a
metaphor are a function of problems involved in translating in general” (1982: 149).
Eugéne Nida, and Vinay and Darbelnet insist that, on some occasions, it is not pos-
sible to transíate a metaphor with another metaphor, for instance in
(14) “a late, ham-handed comedy” (una comedia más reciente, con un elenco lamentable).

A tentative scheme of modes of metaphor translation would show the following

possibilities, in order of Newmark’s preference (1981: 88):
■ reproducing the same image in the TL;
■ replacing the image in the SL, with a standard TL image;
■ translating the metaphor by a simile;
■ transferring the metaphor by simile plus sense;
■ converting the metaphor into sense.

Dagut (1987: 77) comments on Newmark’s procedures insisting on the necessity “to
distinguish clearly between metaphor proper” — what Newmark calis original metaphor
— and such metaphorical derivatives as polysemes, idioms and proverbs — Newmark’s
dead metaphor. The relevance of this qualitative distinction to translation theory and prac-
tice is not far to seek: translating a given English polyseme, idiom or proverb is achieved
by the selection of another, and the competent translator will only be really put to test in
those cases where the TL system affords no equivalent to the particular SL item and the
translator is therefore forced back on various substitution procedures, rendering the sense,
but not the form, of the ST item. Henee, translation of metaphorical derivatives is essen-
tially the same process as the translation of any other component of the SL system.
Some other theorists arrive at the same final conclusión about the intranslatability of
metaphor between languages belonging to different families and rooted in different cultures:
■ Menachem Dagut (1976, 1987) from English into Hebrew;
■ Mary M. Y. Fung y K. L. Kiu (1987) from English into Chinese.

THE CONTEXT OF METAPHOR

Literary translation
Metaphor mainly occurs in literature, and the main difficulty of literary translation
is that its form has deep roots in a specific language and culture: “every artist’s work,”
writes Hall, “is conditioned by the limitations of the médium within which he works, by
ON TRANSLATING METAPHOR 483

the cultural background in which he has grown up, and by the demands which his culture
makes on him. Henee the literature written in any given language is of course channeled
by the structure of the language.” (1964: 406)
Literary translation may be defined — according to Toury — as “every literary text
in the target literary system (and in the target linguistic system, since every literary text is
a linguistic text), which is equivalent to another text in the source language.” (1981: 11)

The “New Paradigm” theory

The most interesting approach to literary translation is the “New Paradigm” theory.
It began in the middle of the ‘70s with an intemational group of scholars:
■ they have been attempting to break the deadlock in which the study of literary
translation found itself;
■ their approach differs in some fundamental respeets from most traditional work in
the field;
■ the aim is quite simple — to establish a new paradigm system for the study of liter
ary translation, on the basis of a comprehensive theory and ongoing practical
research;
■ they have in common:
• a view of literature as a complex and dynamic system;
• a conviction that there should be a continual interplay between theoretical models
and practical case studies;
• an approach to literary translation which is descriptive, target oriented, functional
and systemic;
■ they have an interest in:
• the norms and constraints that govem the production and reception of translations;
• the relation between translation and other types of text processing, and
• in the place and role of translation both within a given literature and in the inter-
action between literatures;
■ this theory is based both on:
• linguistics (functional grammar and text linguistics), and
• literature (reception and polysystem theories).

Linguistic, time, cultural and aesthetic claims

Literary translation — Sel ver (1986) says — is an art that must balance different
claims:
■ The strictly linguistic claim on the translator, though of course it is a substancial
one, is not the most pressing. In
(15) She seemed to be a little fox pretending to be a sirene, the non-finite -ing clause must be
translated into a relative clause: Parecía un pequeño zorro que pretendía ser una sirena
since the gerund is more restrictive in Spanish — it is only used in simultaneous clauses).

■ There are also time claims: what was written some time ago necessarily requires dif
ferent treatment by the translator than what was created only yesterday (the expres-
sion “passing by coach through a valley,” will be translated differently if the text was
written more than one century ago. We can’t say autobús, but carruaje or diligencia),
and there are cultural claims: no matter how simplistically some people may regard
these matters, the differences between and among cultures are not simple and mecha-
nistic, are not mere differences in the words by which the identical phenomena are
described (we transíate “Secretary Kissinger” by el Secretario de Estado. . .).
484 Meta, XXXVIII, 3, 1993

■ The most importan!, and also the most difficult, claim to deal with is what might be
termed the aesthetic claim', that is to say, how is the translator to reproduce in the
new language the peculiar forcé and strength, the inner meanings as well as the
merely outer ones, of what the original writer created solely and exclusively for and
in a different language and a different culture. This is the claim imposed by meta-
phorical language. If the translator of a literary work has not done justice to the
aesthetic claim, almost nothing else that he has done can possibly be worthy, as
would happen with the following metaphoric expression:
(16) “Her laughter. The same as it had been at first, that unmuddled spring of freshness”
(Aquella risa. La misma del principio, aquel límpido manantial de frescura').

Therefore, the relationship of the work translated and the translator’s own work is a
subtle and difficult one: “the translator — says Raffel and Burago (1972: 238) — , must be a
careful investigator and an honest, sensitive critic, who can choose an author’s basic charac-
teristics and, when he needs to, can sacrifice to (hese characteristics others of less impor-
tance. He even must forget his own personality, must think only of the author’s personality.”

TREATMENT OF METAPHOR BY TRANSLATION AS A RULE-GOVERNING ACTIV1TY

Source text-oriented theories of translation serve as a basis for translator’s training,
since they are concemed mainly with the act of translating potential translations and pro-
viding “translational norms as an intermediating factor between the system of potential
equivalence relationships and the actual performance.” (Toury 1981: 24) On the contrary,
literary translation theory must be target text-oriented because it supplies a starting point
or framework for a descriptive study of actual textual-linguistic producís (instances of
performance rather than competence).
But, can we apply translation theory to the specific problems of metaphoric trans-
ference?
Having in mind all the previous theories, we are going to suggest some generaliza-
tions on metaphor translation. Thus, we have to analyse how metaphors are constructed,
how they function in their context, inside the text they belong to. We shall use Angela
Cárter ’s The Passion of New Eve, since metaphorical language has a primary function in
telling the story, and in conveying its meaning. As Peter Ackroyd (1977) says, in this
book, “Carter’s language is so grandiose and verbose it can only transmit fantasies and
visions,” as is the case in the following metaphorical appositions:
(17) I’d lost them by the time I left the desert, the ___domain ofthe sun, the arena of metaphysics,
the place where I became myself (Las había perdido cuando abandoné el desierto, el reinado
del sol, la arena de la metafísica, el sitio en que llegué a ser yo misma).

It is, of course, beyond the scope of this study to discuss all the metaphors in the
text; the wealth of figures to be dealt with would make this an impossible task for our
purpose. We shall choose some examples which can be classified into five types:
Transferring the same image into the target language, provided the image has compa
rable frequency and currency in the appropriate register. This is suggested by Kloepfer
and Masón, who defend a word-for-word translation of the already created metaphor
from the source language: “transíate the vehicle (in Richard’s terminology) and the tenor
will transíate itself.” This procedure is common for one-word metaphors, and the more
universal the sense, the more likely the transfer:
(18) From these unnatural skies fell rains of gelatinous matter (caían lluvias de una sustan
cia gelatinosa). The Spanish versión is more specific because of the determinen
ON TRANSLATING METAPHOR 485

Sometimes it is more difficult to reproduce one-word metaphors where the sense is

an event or quality rather than entity:
(19) “She loitered among the confession magazines” (Se paseaba entre las revistas de
confesiones).

If we make a componential analysis of the verb loiter we can see that a lot of semes
have been lost:

move walk waste time idle fall behind

loiter 4- + 4- +

pasear + 4- - - -

We suggest se entretenía, for instance, which inelude those three specific semes,
absent in pasear.
Transfer of complex metaphors is much rarer and depends on cultural overlap. The
following examples are word-for-word translations:
(20) “She, fleshy synthesis of the dream, both dreamed and dreamer” (síntesis carnal del
sueño, soñada y a la vez soñadora). It can be translated literally into Spanish because of our
language and cultural proximity.
(21) . . .into the diabolic cleft of the night (hacia el hueco diabólico de la noche).

Modulation from more specific to more general.

(22) “Tristessa, the very type of romantic dissolution, necrophilia incamate” (Tristessa, el
alma misma de la disolución romántica, la encarnación de la necrofilia).

Modulation from more general to more specific:

(23) She was entirely the creature of this undergrowth (Era la hija de aquella espesura).

Metonymic transfer: whole —► part

Angela Cárter feels a preoccupation with the body, the human body, and sometimes
gets a sense of the city as a body:
(24) That the city had become nothing but a gigantic metaphor for death (El hecho de que la
ciudad no fuese ahora sino una vasta metáfora de la muerte)

There are some structural changes:

H transposition (change of polarity), the negation passes from the O to the V;
II the resulting copula —► current copula;
H the modulation: from specific to general, and the metaphor of the modifier gigantic
is translated by its sense vasta.

The image of the city tums up in her work over and over again.
(25) A wasted, inner-city moon... leaked a few weak beams upon my prey (Una luna con
sumida, de ciudad interior. . . vertía unos pocos rayos débiles sobre mi presa).

Transposition: the pre-modifier, adjectival phrase —► postmodifier, prepositional phrase.

486 Meta, XXXVIII, 3, 1993

Modulation (aspectual): inner is pejorative and interior neutral. There is also a change
of meaning in interior.

Leaked does not have direct correspondence with vertía, since the former means to
let pass through a hole or crevice and the latter means throw.
(26) In “The geometric labyrinth of the heart of the city” (eZ laberinto geométrico del
corazón de la ciudad), a word-for-word translation, the metaphorical term heart is already
lexicalized, but it becomes an original metaphor when Angela Cárter adds a modifier to it:
(27) The megalopolitan heart that did not beat any more (el corazón megalopolitano que ya
había dejado de latir).

All the previous metaphors were rendered with by their literal equivalents in
Spanish. On the contrary, there are cultural voids that have no cultural correspondence.
They are words defining some part of the source language specific culture for which,
because of their disparity, there is no one-word equivalent in the target language:
(28) In “chewing a stick of candy — a Baby Ruth...” the best way to deal with it is to tran
scribe it in the actual target text: “mascando un palillo de caramelo, un Baby Ruth...” and, if
necessary, to explain the term in a footnote or to append a glossary at the end. This preserves
the cultural authenticity of the source language and enables the reader to see the genuine
expression of the original.

Adaptation of the same image that appears in source language. This is the obvious
way of modifying the shock a metaphor can produce in the target language, particularly if
the target text is not emotive in character. This procedure can be used to modify any type
of word, as well as original complex metaphor: In the case of
(29) “New York has become the City ofDreadful Night” (Ciudad de los terrores nocturnos),
we simply have to adapt a most suitable form, without changing the image of the metaphor.
As we can see, Angela Cárter presents New York as a kind of huge, decaying body while she
considers the city a very strong metaphor.

The same structural changes we have observed on tranferring an image from the
source language to the target language are evident when it is necessary to adapt this
image: in the following example, there is modulation from product to object/instrument:
(30) In “Sometimes he talked about the death camps, and how the Gestapo raped his wife”
(campos de exterminio), we have to choose a lexical Ítem admitted in the target language.

Re-creation in the target language of a different metaphor, which is considered by

Dagut as the special problem of translating metaphor proper. In his own words:
The metaphor in the ST, being by definition a Creative violation of the SL semantic System,
has to be created in the TT, since its equivalent obviously cannot be found in the TL system
(1987: 78).

Thus, the translator will have to re-create the metaphor in the TL if we do not
accept the untested and improbable assumption that all metaphors are universal and,
therefore, it is sufficient for a metaphor to be acceptably and effectively used in one lan
guage to ensure its equal acceptability and effectiveness when literally transferred to any
other language:
(31) Her swimming eyes (Sus ojos flotantes).
ON TRANSLATING METAPHOR 487

According to Masón, “each occurrence of a metaphor for translation must be treated

in isolation: each of its components must be dealt with in the light of its cultural connota-
tions before a translation of the whole can take place, and account must also be taken of
the textual context in which the metaphor is used.” (1982: 149) Culturally specific
metaphors have to be treated quite differently, precisely because its function is not to
denote a cultural referent. In the following example. we do not simply have to adapt the
metaphor, but to create a new one:
(32) In “When they heard my cut-glass vowels of an East Coast university,” we do not sim
ply have to adapt the metaphor. On the other hand, transcription would be totally incompre
hensible to the target language reader, with the context providing no clues as to its meaning,
and explanatory additions not conveying any of the emotional forcé of the source language
to the reader. Thus, the translator has to recreate a new metaphor: “Cuando oyeron mis
vocales cristalinas."

Or the following example:

(33) “it kept me all agog in my nng-side seaf ’ (me mantenía paralizado de ansiedad, pegado
a mi butaca junto al cuadrilátero).

“Culturally specific metaphors are untranslatable” — Dagut States — ”it is not pos-
sible either to paraphrase or to explain them, and their transference word-for-word will
distort the source language, since the cultural reference of the term is not their main reason.”
(1987: 80) Thus, the cultural content is not important in its own right, but only as the
vehicle of metaphor.

Translation of metaphor by simile plus sense. According to Newmark (1981: 88),

while this is always a compromise procedure, it has the advantage of combining commu-
nicative and semantic translation in addressing itself both to the layman and the expert if
there is a risk that the simple transfer of the metaphor will not be understood by most
readers:
(34) She is a fox (es tan astuta y aguda como un zorro).

Translation of metaphor by its sense. Depending on the type of text, this procedure is
comrnon, and is to be preferred to any replacement of an SL by a TL image which is too
wide of the sense or the register (including here current frequency, as well as the degrees
of formality, emotiveness and generality, etc.). In poetry translation, compensation in a
nearby parí of the text may be attempted; but to State that in poetry, any metaphor must
always be replaced by another is an invitation to inaccuracy and can only be valid for
original metaphors.
A case of compensation may be the following example: “... to scurry back, quick
as I could, to festering yet familiar London, the devil I knew” (... de vuelta a Londres,
lo más rápido posible, a la ciudad emponzoñada pero familiar, el demonio conocido).
The proper noun London is not repeated in the apposition but a synonym.
Actually, when a metaphor is converted into sense, the sense must be analysed
componentially, since the essence of an image is that it is pluridimensional — otherwise
literal language would have been used. Further, the sense of an image will usually have
an emotive as well as a factual component, an element of exaggeration which will be
reduced in the translation in inverse ratio to the liveliness of the metaphor.
Thus we can transíate
(35) “She is as good as gold"' (posee las mejores cualidades), and in
488 Meta, XXXVIII, 3, 1993

(36) “All these absurd notions flickered through my injustice as I tore hell-for-leather
through the night” (me precipitaba desgarrando); the translator has chosen to change the
metaphor inte its meaning.

(tore is not used in its literal sense; thus the translation could have been “Corría como el
demonio” or simply “Me precipité a toda velocidad”).
In fact, without metaphorical language a work of literature tums into another kind
of text — certainly never intended by its original author — this detracts from the read-
ability of the work and thus does an injustice to the author (as well as it presumably
reduces the number of readers of the translation); the same happens in:
(37) So she led me deep into (Así me arrastró hasta internarme en).

Modulation from concrete to abstract:

The conversión of a metaphor or a simile to their sense can be considered a dele-
tion. There is a case for its deletion, together with its sense component, provided the SL
text is not authoritative or expressive (that is, primarily an expression of the writer’s per-
sonality). A decisión of this nature can be made only after the translator has weighed up
what he thinks is more important and what is less important in the text in relation to its
intention.

CONCLUSION
We may conclude by saying that when we examine metaphor within its immediate
context, it reveáis that the metaphoric process is not only the substitution of a lexical term
from one semantic ___domain for a term from another, but there are also other intemal rela-
tionships within the larger context of the entire text: the narrative framework also comes
into play and orientales our interpretation. This happens mainly when we analyse Angela
Carter’s tale, full of oíd myths and symbols that relate to each other throughout the story.
An example may be this original metaphor that defines her heroine’s character:
(38) “I used to adore to watch her dressing herself. . . in her craket mirror, the tranformation of
the grubby little bud... she was a night-blooming flower” (Me fascinaba observarla cuando
se engalanaba por las noches... en el espejo cuarteado, la metamorfosis de aquel capullo
agusanado. . . era una flor que se abría de noche). We need to identifie Carter’s theme of the
mirror as a Symbol, and to change the tradition which applied to it the meaning of woman’s
vanity for that of the heroine seeing herself reflected as an object, a sight that discovers her
own identity. The identification of the purpose of metaphor, then, is necessary if the translator
wants to interpret the story properly, since the translatability of metaphor in concrete texts will
depend on the relations into which it enters with the other elements on various levels.

What we have mainly attempted is to show that certain generalizations can be made
about the process of translating metaphor. Since theory is concemed with discovering
regularities and should not try to create them by imposing rules or norms on translational
practice, we have tested the cases that helped our purpose, both in the source and in the
target language, and have got these results:
In Angela Carter’s The Passion ofNew Eve, metaphors have been translated in the
following modes: 1) by transferring the same image into the target language, in more than
fifty percent of all cases, because of the proximity of the two systems; 2) by adapting the
same image that appears in source language, in about ten percent of cases: the structure of
every language demands an adaptation in some cases; 3) by re-creating in the target lan
guage a different metaphor, in twenty percent of cases; this derives from the cultural
voids between languages that have no possible word-for-word equivalent; 4) there are
ON TRANSLATING METAPHOR 489

few cases of translating metaphors or símiles by their sense. That means that the transla-
tor has paid due attention to the aesthetic claim of the text and has tried to offer a versión
according to the author’s purpose. In Angela Cárter, meaning is interweaved with form; if
the translator had ignorad the metaphorical language, the result would have been a bad
translation.
We hope that this explanation, in that it brings a tentative description of how and to
what extent metaphors can be translated, has in a sense contributed to clarifying what a
theory of literary translation can actually try to achieve.

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