Figurative language in translations
Abstract
The use of words and expressions with figurative meaning is very widespread at all levels of the language. The expressive quality of images is used unconsciously. Reference is not made here to literary metaphors nor even to standard phrases with a conventional meaning (to "pull" someone's leg), but to expressions which although based on a metaphor, are used nowadays almost exclusively in a figurative sense ("the eye of the needle"; "the mountain range runs from North to South"). The latter have experienced, firstly, a semantic expansion, and later, a semantic displacement, having being converted into fossil metaphors. In fact, taking etymological aspects into consideration, it can be seen that images underlie a large number of words (e.g., "bertso" < versus: "a furrow which is made when ploughing the earth"), although the speaker is not really conscious of the hidden metaphors it contains.
In all languages there are living metaphors and fossil metaphors. the former are used as comparative images, the latter are idiomatic structures which are not used in the original sense.
The translator does not normally act in the same way in each case. Living metaphors are usually translated by using the same metaphor, or by means of one with a similar image value; fossil metaphors, on the other hand, require knowledge of their equivalent in the target language, if any.
With regard to translations from Basque to other languages or from other languages to Basque, in the article several texts are analyzed in which certain constants can be observed:
a) When a phrase is used with a figurative meaning in Basque, it is translated almost always with the same figurative sense.
b) Nevertheless, on many occasions, although it would not appear to be an image, in the proper sense of the word, in the text in Basque, it is translated using terms with a figurative meaning, or the semantic impact of the image is intensified.
c) In translations into Basque, phrases with figurative meaning are maintained on very rare occasions.
d) On the other hand, translations to Basque are usually made considering the sense in a purely indicative and explanatory way.
These constants are even more significant if it is borne in mind that the authors analyze translations of certain works into Spanish that they themselves have made (Grand Placen aurkituko gara and Obabakoak). A clear imbalance is observed between the original and the translation.
Expression by means of images is a lot less developed in Basque than in the languages of neighbouring countries, and the multiple meaning of words, derived almost always from the figurative use of specific terms, is greater in these other languages, This fact has meant that the translator into Basque resorts to an explanatory translation, and we often find ourselves with translations which, although correct, lack the colour of the original and seem insipid.
