Metaphor Functioning in Military Discourse and Ways of Its Translation into Russian (on Material of English-language Periodicals)

Abstract

On the material of the corpus of English-language texts of articles informing about military actions, armed conflicts and defence issues, the analysis of metaphors and their translation into Russian is carried out. The main types of metaphor in military discourse are identified: metaphorical phraseological units, worn out metaphors and metaphors-cliché, terminated metaphor, recent metaphor (neologisms), non-deployed speech metaphor. It is indicated that the most frequent translation techniques used for translation of metaphors in military discourse are demetaphorization, calques, remetaphorization, translation by equivalent metaphorical expression in the target language with the use of translation transformations (addition, omission, antonymy translation). The article focuses on the technique of demetaphorization, which text realizations form 50 % of the total number of cases examined. It is shown that demetaphorization may be accompanied by a combination of translation transformations (generalization, adequate substitute, descriptive translation). It is established that the choice of translation technique depends on the type of metaphor and its structure (component composition). The analysis revealed that the result of the use of demetaforization is the replacement of more expressive, pragmatically loaded lexical units of the original text with neutral equivalents, that is motivated by the norms of the language of translation: Russian military texts are characterized by lexical and stylistic uniformity and much less saturation with stylistically coloured elements in comparison with English texts. However, despite this, the use of demetaforization technique makes it possible to convey the necessary element of the original content, the preservation of which in translation is a minimum condition for providing the recipient of the expression of the translation language with a pragmatic impact, for which the sender of the original language is seeking.

Keywords

• military discourse
• metaphor
• translation techniques
• translation transformations