Cognitive Approaches to Specialist Languages

Inferential Patterns in the Translation of Financial Metaphors

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to derive the underlined meanings by applying the appropriate inferential
strategies obtained from his/her specialist knowledge of the matter.
Finally, he/she manages to understand (decode) adequately the original
intention and reconfigure the financial metaphor in its context by applying
correct conceptual information and linguistic data in the target language.
Let us illustrate this process with an example of a not too complex
financial metaphor:

The bear has bad breath

The comprehension phase prompts the readers to detect and relate the
metaphorical terms included in this statement to their literal equivalents.
The cognitive English stimuli addressed are encouraged by the metaphors
contained in the utterance: bear and bad breath, which are aimed at
stimulating specific inferential mechanisms in the readers, which may
allow them to interpret the metaphorical load. Logically, these inferences
may be achieved, as we shall see later, due to the specific knowledge the
readers have on the translated matter – in this case, financial English:

[1] bear = ‘pessimistic investors, selling investors, speculators, etc.’ [negative

financial inferences]

[2] bad breath = ‘unfavourable speculative tendencies; increase selling, etc.’

[financial inferences derived from the natural language connotative

meanings]

Once the inferential process is completed, the addressees can extract
the accurate meaning of the sentence, which includes its literal and – in
this particular case – covert intentional load:

[3] (Possible)^9 inferred meaning (The bear has bad breath) = ‘pessimistic

investors increase the selling of their stocks’.

A similar cognitive process takes place during the translation process
(Figure 2). Translators adopt the addressor’s role now, and – after
accessing the intentional information contained in the original metaphor
(context 1) – they try to frame a similar target-language metaphor which

(^9) In this specific instance, as these metaphors refer to a financial article headline,
they fail to provide the readers with all the necessary contextual information.
Consequently, it would be necessary to read the full article to check whether this
translation matches or not the original contents, as it could also refer not only to
investors, but also to stock market position, stock price tendencies, etc.