Difficulties in Identifying and Translating Linguistic Metaphors: A Survey and Experiment among Translation Students

Abstract

A survey of twelve translation students in 2017 revealed that they tend to find translating figurative and metaphorical language difficult. In addition, an experiment also conducted in 2017 showed similar results. During the first phase of this experiment, two trained researchers coded metaphorical items in a text from the New Scientist following the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (MIPVU). Based on Cohen's kappa, the researchers reached an initial coding agreement of 0.692 (strong agreement) and a final agreement score of 0.958 (almost perfect agreement) after discussion. The second phase of the experiment involved the coding of the metaphorical items previously identified by the researchers in the same text by 47 students who received a two-hour introduction to conceptual metaphor theory and a simplified method to code metaphorical items. However, the results of the students' coding showed that they had failed to identify metaphors in 49.96% of cases. Nevertheless, a chi-squared test revealed that the students' coding was not due to chance alone and therefore not arbitrary.

Keywords

• metaphor-related words
• metaphor identification procedure
• translation studies