Metonymie in der Gedichtübersetzung

Abstract

This study represents a contrastive analysis of Michael Ende’s poem “Der Lindwurm und der Schmetterling oder Der seltsame Tausch” and its Serbian translation by Spomenka Krajčević titled “Zmaj i Leptir ili Neobična zamena” based on the cognitive-linguistic theory of conceptual metonymy. The purpose of the analysis is to determine in what way the mechanisms of conceptual metonymy may be utilized for the purposes of poetry translation. For this reason, those passages of the translated poem will be analyzed which deviate from the original in such a way that the semantic material of the deviating passages exhibits the characteristics of metonymy, namely a specific conceptual configuration between an Idealized Cognitive Model (Frame) and its parts. The analysis revealed 61 metonymic relationships between the target- and the source text, of which 46 in total (75.4%) reveal a contiguous relationship between two parts of an ICM, indicating that this metonymic principle of configuration may present a considerably more flexible translation strategy for poetry translation than the substitution of an entire ICM with one of its parts or vice versa.