Metaphorical mountainscapes : Translating metaphors, similes and metonymy in an adventure travel guide

Sammanfattning: This study examines the translation of an adventure travel guide from English to Swedish, focusing on the translation of conventional metaphors, original metaphors, metonymy and similes, with special attention to conceptual metaphors. The results show that most of the metaphors are reproduced in the target text, along with most of the metonymic segments and all similes. The findings suggest that the relatively high rate of metaphors and metonymy reproduced is due to a high degree of shared metaphorical concepts in source and target culture, whereas the decrease likely is due to an asymmetry in the preference of usage and degree of elaboration for these metaphors. The qualitative analysis shows that many conceptual metaphors fulfilled important functions in the source text, which confirms previous research that preserving the conceptual metaphors as much as possible in the translation process is essential in order to preserve all the functions of the source text. Analysis of metonymy and the personification of cities shows how the metonymic concept place for person is related to the central theme of personification and that this concept is likewise used to fulfill an important purpose of the source text, showing that metonymy is equally important to preserve in the translation process. The results of this study suggest that the choice of translation strategy in some cases is less dependent on category and more dependent on to what extent the cultural concepts that the metaphor/simile/metonymy is based on is similar/different, more/less elaborate or more/less preferred in source and target culture.