Inferential Patterns in the Translation of Financial Metaphors
101Metaphors,^1 inference and translation
Basically, speakers and writers use metaphors in an effort to elucidate
concepts or ideas they consider cognitively complex in a specific
communicative context. Thus, they resort to these vivid linguistic
mechanisms to stimulate in their readers/ addressees the adequate
inferences. Such allegorical uses may have different purposes (Gibbs et al.
2011), add new information, strengthen or contradict previous beliefs, or
offer specific information which may be “more difficult to convey using
non-metaphorical speech” (op. cit.: 2011: 4). However, we should not
restrict the use of metaphors only to clarifying complex language
situations with the aspiration to ease their cognitive load. In many
circumstances, understanding metaphors does not necessarily imply bigger
cognitive efforts than interpreting plain denotative speech,^2 as they are
also used to illustrate concepts, to play with them (humour) or to offer
linguistic and semantic alternatives to a word or concept. Furthermore,
Wilson (2010: 41) writes, at this respect, that metaphors are not just
decorative devices without cognitive significance, but linguistic resources
on their own that often “cannot be paraphrased in literal terms without loss
to the meaning”. Metaphors are absolutely central to ordinary language
semantics (Lakoff 1993). They are powerful and extremely useful cognitive
instruments that help addressors and addressees interpret complex specific
domains without having to resort to intricate inferential mechanisms, as
financial language can often be for semi-expert and lay users.^3
(^1) I shall not tackle in this chapter the traditional differences many authors establish
between metaphors and similes as I consider both similar explicative procedures
based on the explicit character of similes and the implicit nature of metaphors. Nor
do I intend to fine-tune the linguistic content of metaphorical financial language
but to give a cognitive account of its translation process. I shall focus then on
source language financial metaphors and their corresponding target language
equivalents, where translators have applied what the Relevance Theory calls ad
hoc concepts or “concepts that are constructed pragmatically by a hearer in the
process of utterance [in our case: of financial metaphors] comprehension” (Carston
2002: 322).
(^2) In fact, for Cognitive Linguistics metaphors are a reflection of the human’s
ability to think symbolically and point out the distinction between “a metaphor and
a metaphorical expression: where the former refers to cross-domain mappings in
the conceptual system and the latter to linguistic expressions (e.g. words, phrases
or sentences) which are the realization of conceptual metaphors” (Tendahl 2009:
140).
(^3) In that respect, Henderson (2000, cited in Skorczynska and Deignan 2006: 88)
criticizes the use of popular business media texts in English language teaching for