Comparative study of metaphor in literary texts and their translations

Abstract

Since Aristotle metaphor was relegated to the domain of literature, until the revolution instantiated by Lakoff and Johnson in the 1980s showed its pervasiveness in language and thought, but paradoxically, it alienated metaphor research from poetics. The latter has slowly been finding its feet in conceptual metaphor studies and with the new development of corpus research, obtained ample material for cross-cultural analysis especially with the help of parallel texts studies – an efficient way to delve into linguistic and culturally-defined differences. The aim of the research is by identifying the conceptual metaphor behind the metaphorical linguistic expressions in key texts from five of the greatest stylists of the English language, and by comparing them to their translations into Bulgarian, to check whether metaphor is lost or transformed in any way. Conclusions are made regarding literature in translation, suggesting cases in which it is comparable to original writing in terms of metaphor type and density.