CHAPTER FIFE
INFERENTIAL PATTERNS IN THE TRANSLATION
OF FINANCIAL METAPHORS
JOSÉ MATEO
Introduction
The translation process involves the performance of a series of cognitive,
linguistic, pragmatic and cultural actions aimed at transferring to a
different language and culture, as close as possible, the intentional load,
the linguistic content and the communicative process that had been
previously established between a source language author and his/her
readers. To achieve this target, translators are committed, in a first stage,
not only to elucidate the general linguistic contents but also to identify the
metaphorical structures the original messages convey. This implies
understanding their inherent inferential performance before they are
transferred and reproduced in an accurate and effective way in the target
language. Inference is a universal cognitive mechanism humans use and
adapt to their particular language systems in an effort to interpret their
conceptual universes through their culture and language usage. As it
typically serves addressees to recognize and, therefore, understand the
informative and communicative intentions of the addressors in the same
language, inference also becomes a fundamental issue in the translation
process between different ones. Inference comes to be the human
cognitive response to the problem of the existence, in all languages, of
more concepts than words to describe them. This chapter discusses certain
cognitive-inferential strategies target readers resort to in the translation of
L1 financial metaphors in order to provide L2 solutions. To illustrate my
points, I will analyze, in the second half of this chapter, certain financial
metaphors in English which lack direct translations into Spanish, and I
will apply cognitive and linguistic tools so as to reach suitable renderings.