MEANS OF RENDERING MENTAL IMAGERY OF SPATIAL CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS IN TRANSLATION

Abstract

The article aims at outlining the main means of rendering mental images embodied in spatial conceptual metaphors from the source language into the target language. Each translation strategy is illustrated by an example comparing the spatial metaphorical expressions taken from V. Woolf’s two novels “Mrs Dalloway” and “Orlando” with their Ukrainian, Russian, French, and Italian translation variants. The analysis of 196 ontological metaphorical expressions and their 669 translation variants has made it possible to defi ne the following eight means of rendering the mental images of ontological metaphors: 1) retention of a metaphor and its mental image; 2) metaphor retention; creation of a new mental image; 3) metaphor retention; an incomplete rendering of its mental image; 4) substitution for another spatial metaphor; 5) substitution for a structural metaphor and/or an ontological metaphor; 6) substitution for an image metaphor; 7) substitution for a concept or a frame; 8) elimination of a metaphor and its mental image. The study shows that translators resort to altering original ontological metaphors and their mental images in 61% of cases that accounts for a frequent disparity between the source and target text conceptualizations and, consequently, between their scene construals.