Translating conceptual qur’anic metaphor: A cogno-translational approach

Abstract

This study will investigate metaphor translation as a natural phenomenon. It will analyze some of the problems involving the translation of metaphorical expressions in two Qur’anic translations, namely, Yusuf Ali's The Holy Qur’an: Text, Translation and Commentary and Laleh Mehree Bakhtiar's The Sublime Qur’an. The analysis in this study employs both quantitative and qualitative methods, as well as a cognitive framework of metaphor, which helps conciliate the cultural specificity of metaphors and their transference into linguistically and culturally unrelated languages. The present analysis is based on Mandelblit’s Cognitive Translation Hypothesizes (CTH) (Mandelblit (1995), Maalej’s strategies of translating metaphor (Maalej, 2002, 2008) and Kövecses’s concept of Cultural Variation (Kövecses, 2002,2006).