RALI-OLST-ILFC Weekly Talks

On Wednesdays at 11:30 a.m. (Montreal time), we hold a one-hour talk on a language processing or linguistics topic. It is typically offered in hybrid mode (in person/videoconference). Once a month, the talk is organized by the French research group Linguistique Informatique, Formelle et de Terrain.

Cultural Specificity of Terminological Metaphor

Boyan Alexiev

Department of Applied Linguistics University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy Sofia, Bulgaria

Wednesday 8 June 2005 at 11:30 AM

Salle C-9019, Pavillon Lionel-Groulx


In this talk, I will propose a methodology for evaluating the cultural specificity of terminological metaphor with the purpose of choosing the proper strategy for its translation. The methodology is based on a combined terminological-experientialist model of special metaphorical concept creation involving a general reference concept-onto-a special referent mapping with a resultant interactional metaphoric characteristic that is lexicalised in the term form. Within this framework the metaphorical term designator makes two cognitive choices, namely, the choice of a designation characteristic to be explicated metaphorically and the choice of a general concept containing a characteristic that can be related by analogy to the designation one. These choices are determined by culture-experiential parameters such as the angle of special referent perception, degree of cultural typicality of the general reference concept, availability of a fixed general concept-onto-broad special concept mapping in the particular culture and level of specificity of special referent perception. The terminological metaphor translator determines whether similar or different culture-experiential parameters operate in the source and target language. In the first case the metaphorical conceptualisation is preserved by calquing and in the second it is either substituted by a cultural metaphoric substitute or lost by resorting to a superordinate, a gloss or a loanword.


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