Analysis of the interface between language competence and conceptual metaphor in translation studies

Abstract

The article seeks to explore the interface between language competence requirements as set by EMT and analyzed by PACTE and conceptual metaphor studies. The research strives to provide an assessment of an experiment conducted with three groups of translators – two non-professional ones, e.g. students of English philology in their 4th year with some translation practice and one group comprised of professional translators and university lecturers. Systematic knowledge of the theoretical underpinnings of Conceptual Metaphor Theory is privy to only one of the groups of non-professional translators. The experiment includes a translation of an article from the Economist by all groups. A number of metaphoric units (words and phrases) have been identified in the article on the basis of MIP procedures. The objective of the research is to gauge the importance of metaphoric competence for performing a successful translation. The results obtained from the current study, though not conclusive show that metaphoric competence plays a significant role in translators’ competencies. Metaphoric awareness may not be directly linked with Conceptual Metaphor Theory, but it proves vital to the quality of translation.