Употребление метафор в переводе с английского на узбекский язык

When considering the role conceptual metaphor plays in the worldview of the community, the problem becomes twofold. From a sociological, cultural or philosophical perspective, the question becomes, to what extent ideologies maintain and impose conceptual patterns of thought by introducing, supporting, and adapting fundamental patterns of thinking metaphorically. To what extent does the ideology fashion and refashion the idea of the nation as a container with borders? How are enemies and outsiders represented? As disseases? As attackers? How are the metaphoric paths of fate, destiny, history and progress represented? As the opening of an eternal monumental moment (German fascism)? Or as the path to communism (in Russian or Czech for example)?

Though cognitive scholars have made some attempts to take on board the idea that different languages have evolved radically different concepts and conceptual metaphors, they have on the whole remained tied up in the somewhat reductive concept of worldview which derives from the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The true source of ethnolinguistics and the thinker who contributed most to the debate on the relationship between culture, language and linguistic communities was the German philologist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835). Humboldt remains, however, little known in English-speaking nations. Andrew Goatly, in his 'Washing the Brain' (John Benjaminns 2007)does take on board the dual problem of conceptual metaphor as a framework implicit in the language as a system, and the way individuals and ideologies negotiate conceptual metaphors.

James W. Underhill, in 'Creating Worldviews: ideology, metaphor & language' (Edinburgh UP), considers the way individual speech adopts and reinforces certain metaphoric paradigms. This involves a critique of both communist and fascist discourse. But Underhill's studies are situated in Czech and German, which allows him to demonstrate the ways individuals are both thinking 'within', and resisting the modes by which ideologies seek to appropriate key concepts such as 'the people', 'the state', 'history' and 'struggle'.

Though metaphors can be considered to be 'in' language, Underhill's chapter on French, English and ethnolinguistics demonstrates that we cannot conceive of language or languages in anything other than metaphoric terms. French is a treasure, for example. English is a 'tool' for liberating minorities engaging in debate in the global world. Underhill continues his investigation of the relationship between worldview and lanuage in 'Ethnolinguistics and Cultural Concepts: truth, love, hate & war' (Cambridge UP 2012).

More than just a figure of speech

Main article: Conceptual metaphor

Some theorists have suggested that metaphors are not merely stylistic, but that they are cognitively important as well. In Metaphors We Live By George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argue that metaphors are pervasive in everyday life, not just in language, but also in thought and action. A common definition of a metaphor can be described as a comparison that shows how two things that are not alike in most ways are similar in another important way. They explain how a metaphor is simply understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. The authors call this concept a ‘conduit metaphor.’ By this they meant that a speaker can put ideas or objects into words or containers, and then send them along a channel, or conduit, to a listener who takes that idea or object out of the container and makes meaning of it. In other words, communication is something that ideas go into. The container is separate from the ideas themselves. Lakoff and Johnson give several examples of daily metaphors we use, such as “argument is war” and “time is money.” Metaphors are widely used in context to describe personal meaning. The authors also suggest that communication can be viewed as a machine: “Communication is not what one does with the machine, but is the machine itself.” (Johnson, Lakoff, 1980).

Nonlinguistic metaphor

Metaphors can also map experience between two nonlinguistic realms. In The Dream Frontier, Mark Blechner describes musical metaphors, in which a piece of music can "map" to the personality and emotional life of a person.  Musicologist Leonard Meyer demonstrated how purely rhythmic and harmonic events can express human emotions. There can also be a metaphoric mapping between other art forms and human experience. The art theorist Robert Vischer argued that when we look at a painting, we "feel ourselves into it" by imagining our body in the posture of a nonhuman or inanimate object in the painting. For example, the painting "The Solitary Tree" by Caspar David Friedrich shows a tree with contorted, barren limbs. In looking at that painting, we imagine our limbs in a similarly contorted and barren shape, and that creates a feeling in us of strain and distress. Nonlinguistic metaphors may be the foundation of our experience of visual, musical, dance, and other art forms.

Many English words have both literal and metaphorical or figurative meanings. The literal meaning of a word is its most widely used sense. The metaphorical meaning is figurative - it expresses an idea by referring to something else in a non-literal way. Metaphors help us to express our understanding of the world around us. They add colour, vivid imagery and perhaps emotion to a sentence.

In everyday English, words are very commonly used metaphorically. We use metaphors so regularly that we often don't even register that we are using them. For example, we have lots of metaphors about weather.

• The sky was dark and angry.
• His lightning reflexes saved his life.
• His sunny face was just what I wanted to see.

The sky cannot be literally angry and no-one can have reflexes as fast as lightning; a sunny face helps us to think of the warmth of the sun and we transfer this to the character of this person. These words (metaphors) are used to express our understanding or our interpretation of the world around us as clearly as possible.

A lot of metaphors relate to nature in general.

• I think this will throw some light on the issue.
• I've made some punch with wine, fruit juice and a little brandy to break the ice.
• The agreement was hedged around by a large number of restrictions.
• That politician is a sly fox.

The use of "light", "break the ice" and "hedged" are all nature-based metaphors that are used to express how we view the world.

A lot of metaphors are based on gardens or agriculture. For example, we often use the word root to refer to the cause of a problem. It can also be used to describe something starting to grow.

• The root of this problem is Blair's decision to go into Iraq.
• If we keep on pushing this idea forward, it might actually take root.
• The Labour Party wants to have a very strong grass-roots campaign.
• After a rocky start, their romance blossomed.
• This is a thorny issue so it will take some time to sort it out.

Many metaphors relate to water.

• The ocean of his mind was awash with new ideas.
• I don't want to go out with him. He's so wet!
• Waves of disappointment swept over him.
• He watered down his proposal quite a lot and in the end it wasn't radical enough.
• My legs turned to water and I couldn't move.

Have a look at these metaphors and think about how they relate to the literal meaning.

• I swallowed his story whole, I'm sorry to say.
• Her eyes were filled with pain and I couldn't look at her.
• Taking this job is a gamble but I hope it works out well in the end.
• Hotels have sprouted up all over Thailand.
• The minutes crept by as the party was so dull!
• Bush said he would stay the course in Iraq.
• There was a huge amount of fallout over Blair's decision.
• Low interest rated fuelled the house-prices boom.
• His idea was warmly received.
• The two presidential candidates were neck and neck.
• We'd better go back to square one and start again.
• His refusal set off a chain of events that ended in his arrest.
• She made a fatal mistake when she signed the agreement.

 

3. Metaphors and their classification as a

theoretical and practical basis

A metaphor is a "condensed simile": instead of explicitly comparing the characteristics of one person or thing with another, we say that person/thing IS the other person/animal/thing.

With a metaphor, because the comparison is not explicit, it can lead to confusion. If the comparison is not recognized, the expression may be taken literally instead of figuratively.²

Metaphorical expressions typically relate to one particular characteristic and that characteristic may be implicit within a particular cultural setting. If we say "He is the leader of the pack" we are positively admiring someone's leadership qualities - we are not saying anything about other similarities to a pack of wolves or other wild animals!

Types and Examples of Metaphors in Literature 
"Oh God! He was so mad at me!" - This is an example of a simple metaphor in our colloquial language. Here mad means anger. This was a simple metaphor that has one link joining the metaphorical sense (mad) to the subject (anger). Metaphors are classified as common and uncommon types. The common types include extended and mixed metaphors whereas uncommon types comprise absolute, active, complex and compound metaphors. One must have a strong understanding of rules of English grammar and grammar and composition to understand metaphor examples in literature.³ Let us try to understand the different types of metaphors and some examples of metaphors in literature.  
Absolute Metaphor: This is a metaphor in which there is little connection between the metaphorical sense and the actual entity. This is mostly intended to confuse the readers. 
Example - "A television set is the autobahn of a living room."  
This is an example of an absolute metaphor where the object has absolutely no relation with the metaphor used for the former's assertion. Sometimes, this is also referred as paralogical metaphor. The main intention of such metaphorical usages are to confuse the readers, allowing them to draw their own interpretations. 
 
Complex Metaphor: A complex metaphor is one that is used to identify with some other entity by layering over a simple metaphor. 
 
Example - "Let me throw some light on this subject of philosophy."  
This is an example of a complex metaphor where "throw some light" is used as metaphor to clear some point. In literary sense, there is actually no light. 
 
Extended Metaphor: This is a metaphor in which there is one primary subject and several other secondary objects used for comparison.  
 
Example - "All the world's a stage and men and women merely players. " 
This is the famous line from William Shakespeare's play - 'As you like it'. It is supposedly one of the best extended metaphor examples in literature. The world is described as a stage which is the primary entity and men and women are the subsidiary subjects who are a part of the stage.  
 
Implicit Metaphor: As the name suggests, here the core context of the text is not explicitly stated as it is implied as self understandable. 
 
Example - "It was extremely hot during the day. We were almost roasted!" 
This is an example of an implicit metaphor where roasted gives the underlying meaning of how hot it was during the day. 
 
Mixed Metaphor: Mixed metaphor is a collection of metaphors which may not necessarily align well with each other. Their usage is most of the time deliberate and spontaneous. Sometimes they add a comic punch to the statements. 
 
Example - "Driving down the dangerous terrains of Guatemala was nothing but playing with fire in the belly." 
 
This is a mixed metaphor example in literature where driving has been compared with fire in the metaphorical sense. Take a sample - "Jenny was pretty cool the day before the Chemistry paper. She is weak in Chemistry and was never good at it. Jenny has topped the subject now. Needless to say, her aunt was her Chemistry teacher. I smell a rat for sure!" Here, "I smell a rat" is an instance of a mixed metaphor example in literature, where relating the "smelling a rat" to an instance has no logical relation.  
 
Pataphor: Pataphors are extreme metaphors. They go way beyond in expressing a statement by using extensions of a simple metaphor. 
 
Example - "James and Sandra are having a casual conversation where James coyly signals for a date. Sandra agrees to catch up on the coming Friday. Once she leaves, James messages Helen about going on a date on Thursday. James smiles as the message from Helen beeps "Yes". So finally he was done with his checkmating for the day!" 
 
Here the pataphor is created by the word - "checkmating", where there is an imaginary chessboard with characters although there is no literary context of the game attached to it. 
 
Root Metaphor: These are tricky metaphors hidden within a language. They do not reveal explicitly as metaphors. At times these metaphors pave ways for other metaphors to spring from them. Root metaphors basically reflect the understanding of the individual about a particular situation.  
 
Example - "The defense attorney - Mr Simon Andrews never misses on winning an argument.." Here the root metaphor is clear in the statement where an argument is analogous to war. There is a raw aggression factor attached to the statement where it says "winning an argument". It gives an impression that there was a tiff in which one party succeeded in subduing the other. 
 
Submerged Metaphor: This metaphor is an elaboration of a simple statement in an expressive way. When we are told about something, we always tend to imagine a bigger picture of it. So the metamorphic linking to the subject is expressed in a big way.  
 
Example - "Even before the project started, Jenny's thoughts were already on the wings" 
Here the relation of thoughts to wings is an example of a submerged metaphor where the thoughts are projected in a wider picture by comparing them with wings of a bird. If you are interested in teaching about metaphors to your kids, read our article on metaphor examples for kids.

 

4. Ways of translating metaphors and

                       problems inflicted in this process

Respectively taking into consideration all the basic encumbrances of the translation process, hermeneutic aspects have been preferred to be investigated further. Being one of the essential components of the translation items, hermeneutic aspects of translation enhances understandability of the text in the target language created through hermeneutic analysis of the translator that was made after reading the original text in the source language. As whatever translated can’t be rendered without hermeneutic definition of the translator, all the occasions which need it distinctly and the ways how to apply it have been offered in the foregoing statements. Hermeneutic definition is predominantly deployed to avoid literal i.e. word-for word translation, as it enables to render the statements quite explicably.

Definitions are deployed in two methods, the first one reflects generalization, requiring to express the general meaning of the source text by widening it in the target one, and the second contains concretization where the meaning prevailing in the source text is shortened according to the context so as to make it explicit for the reader. ⁴

What concerns the rest of the occasions such as units of emotional coloring, metaphors, metonymy, they would rather be hermeneutically defined either by means of concretization or generalization. One more point ending in a compromise constantly and which regards hermeneutics is deemed to be foreignization and domestication as the scholars haven’t established distinct solution yet. ⁵It’s been preferred to add source-context based “neutralization” into their range. Supposedly it will provide mediation between the theorists who are for domestication and whoever against it. The point is that neutralization helps the translator to preserve both fidelity according to the role of culture-specific items in the context and literary quality of the target text as well as providing the translator invisibility in the text, infusing esthetic pleasure to receptor.

After analyzing the literature translated and surveying many readers of foreign literature, some essential conclusions have been drawn. There are four main options essential in obtaining an adequate translation including equivalence, fidelity, descriptive translation and freedom. The main personal point is that the translator should mediate his attitudes towards them, basically approaching more to freedom and descriptive translation which actually contains hermeneutic definition within. To attract the reader one has to operate first in interest of the culture into which they are translating so that the reader could relish the literary quality of the text. More vividly the translator invisibility should prevail rather than his visibility. ⁶

What concerns the metaphors in literary translation, utilizing hermeneutical definitions solutions to general problems have been offered as follows:

• Concretization
• Generalization
• Using equivalents if available
• Omitting (missing)
• Explaining the basic meaning within the context

In case of translation using any of these transformations some compulsory

options preferred have been counted:

• Translator invisibility
• Free translation
• Adequacy
• Equivalence only taking into consideration context features
• Understandability of the target text
• Fidelity relating to meaning in the source text, not the structure
• Avoiding word for word translation

If these rules are followed and the methods are used properly for metaphors , translation will certainly satisfy the receptor with the emotional coloring aspects delivered perfectly

 

 

 

 

Chapter II Analysis of metaphors in literary translation

from English   into Uzbek

2.1. Analysis of metaphors in literature translated

from English by means of Russian

In the “Uliss”  translated by Ibrohim Gafurov by means of Russian language has become quite well-known among Uzbek readers. But despite that there has been some occasions because of which some aspects were missed through Russian language and weren’t shown in Uzbek. As for metaphors the methods and rules indicated in the previous chapter have been properly utilized during the translation and it can be confirmed in the following examples:

  —God! he said quietly. Isn’t the sea what Algy calls it: a great sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotum tightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks! I must teach you. You must read them in the original. Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother.

Come and look.(6)

– Господи! – сказал он негромко. – Как верно названо море у Элджи: седая нежная мать! Сопливо-зеленое море. Яйцещемящее море. Эпи ойнопа понтон.⁷ Ах, эти греки, Дедал. Надо мне тебя обучить. Ты должен прочесть их в подлиннике. Талатта! Талатта !⁸ Наша великая и нежная мать⁹. Иди сюда и взгляни.(4)

– Шундай , –  деди у секин. – Элжи( сноска берилган1. Элжернон Суинберн)  ҳақ.: у денгизни бўз меҳрибон она деган, мишиқи кўкимтир денгиз. Epi oinopa ponton (snoska  шароб тусли уммон бўйлаб (юнон)  Оҳ, дедалус, сен юнонларни билсанг эди! Сенга албатта ўргатаман... Сен уларнинг аслини ўқишинг керак. Thalatta! Thalatta! (уммон, уммон) Бизнинг улуғ меҳрибон онамиз. Қара. (13)

Looking at these examples, it’s easy to notice that Russian language had considerable effect on translation into Uzbek. The point is that in English a great sweet mother was translated as бўз меҳрибон она according to how it was translated in Russian: седая нежная мать . Translator preferred to say седая (white relating to hair when it becomes white as time passes and people get older) and “bo’z” in Uzbek to strengthen emotional colouring of metaphor as in Uzbek “Ranging bo’zdek oqaribdi, sochlari bo’zdek oq” and etc. “Great and sweet mother” has been generalized in Uzbek translation as the meaning in the origin wasn’t so expression as in translation.

 

—The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. That’s why she won’t let me have anything to do with you.

– Моя тетка считает, ты убил свою мать, – сказал он. – Поэтому она бы мне вообще запретила с тобой встречаться.(4)

There is an additional information in Russian version:(  ⁹ …Ты убил свою мать… бросил Стивен. – В письме Норе 29 августа 1904г. Джойс писал: «Мою мать убили мало-помалу дурное обращение моего отца, годы постоянных тягот и откровенный цинизм моего поведения».)

Ҳоламнинг гапига қараганда сен онангни адои тамом қилибсан, — деди у.

In both Russian and English versions one can see literate use of the word “Kill”  without analyzing the meaning in the context in the Russian version. For instance when the translator saw the word “kill” he preferred to translate as in the origin paying less attention to context,and it was his error. By reading this script the receptor can draw a conclusion that the hero really murdered his own mother and it causes destruction in the meaning of an important expression in the text. Wrong translation can cause to deliver false information to the reader. Therefore before translating sentence by sentence, it’s important to pay attention to the context. As regards the translation into Uzbek, the translator could comprehend the intention of the writer to hide the actual meaning above the present statement, by providing it episodically.