Contemporary translation metaphors: an exploratory study

Translation is an ever-evolving form of transmission that carries with it ideas, hopes, politics, poetics, and desires. Building upon Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s assertion that “translation is the most intimate form of reading” (Spivak 1992), this research aims at exploring the connections between Lori Chamberlain's metaphorics of translation (1988) and existing literature on intimacy and translation. I analyze a series of translator interviews, testimony, and essays on the micro and macro structural levels, to ascertain 1) translator attitudes towards translation metaphors; 2) common words and themes in translation metaphors from translators; 3) mentions of intimacy, the body, or relationality in translation metaphors from literary translators. The examined corpus is the Words Without Borders Translator Relay series. These interviews, published between 2015 and 2021, include six questions: five questions that are reproduced in every interview, and one question that is selected by the previous interviewee. An exploratory textual analysis of the corpus reveals that literary translators use an array of metaphoric language to describe their own work. Initial findings reveal that, out of forty-three interviewees, three translators used notably intimate language as a metaphor for the translation process. Other metaphor categories include magic, comparisons to other artistic mediums, in-betweenness, spiritual channeling, and transport. Many interviewees contend that there exists a plurality of possible metaphors for the process of translation. The data collected through systematic textual organization of this corpus of self-described translation metaphors may serve as a basis for further theoretical development by researchers in the field of translation studies.