The Metaphors of Metaphors or the Poetic Metaphor in Translation

Abstract

This article reviews the nature of textual communication between two languages and the possibilities of appreciating and construing figurative predication originating in a foreign language. Different language denotes a different cultural and literary circle, which the reader cannot reconstruct in the native speaker’s code. However, the article does not discuss translating strategies; it discusses the attributes of metaphor which are in respect to formation and poetics crucial for the articulation - in the target language - of the overall sense of metaphorical predication in poetic text. The key obstacle to translating metaphorically networked texts is the resistance of figurative predication to being construed in the nonfigurative language of interpretation. The native speaker relies on the common loci of immanent literary competence, which is the prerequisite for reception that a non native speaker/reader generally cannot literally reconstruct in his or her own speaking code.