Empirical Translation Studies - Interdisciplinary Methodologies Explored - Meng Ji

Empirical Translation Studies - Interdisciplinary Methodologies Explored - Meng Ji

1. A corpus-based study of metaphor in translation

Empirical Translation Studies - Interdisciplinary Methodologies Explored - Meng Ji

Mark Shuttleworth [+-]
University College London
Mark Shuttleworth is Senior Lecturer in translation Studies in the School of European Languages, Culture & Society, University College London

Description

This paper aims to report reflectively on a major interdisciplinary research project designed to investigate patterns of metaphor translation. The project is based on popular science texts and tracks metaphor in translation from English into French, German, Italian, Polish and Russian (with examples from Chinese and Spanish being added subsequently). The paper looks at questions of text selection and corpus design and considers some of the pitfalls that need to be avoided in these areas by researchers embarking on a similar project. Other methodological issues are also covered. At each step the choices that researchers – and in particular those at an early stage in their careers – who are undertaking an investigation into metaphor in translation are faced with will be discussed explicitly with a view to offering some guidance. Research into metaphor in translation can take on a wide range of different forms. In the project in question the approach taken is exclusively text-based and concentrates on a) identifying a number of parameters derived from metaphor research according to which it is possible to classify metaphorical expressions and b) examining what procedures are used by translators to render them into the target language, what changes these bring about on the micro-level and what effect, if any, the changes that occur have on the overall macro-level ‘shape’ of the target text.

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Citation

Shuttleworth, Mark. 1. A corpus-based study of metaphor in translation. Empirical Translation Studies - Interdisciplinary Methodologies Explored. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 7-29 Jan 2016. ISBN 9781781790496. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=23912. Date accessed: 11 Nov 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.23912. Jan 2016

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