Translators' English-Spanish metaphorical competence: impact on the target system

Abstract

In spite of the large number of interlinguistic competences and skills generally mentioned in translation studies as being essential for translators, metaphorical competence does not figure as one of the relevant ones. And yet, it has a deep impact on the conceptual development of the target system, as we will try to demonstrate on the basis of a study and subsequent report carried out on a reduced corpus of target novel metaphors in newspaper texts published in Spanish and their corresponding source metaphors in English. Many of the translations of these metaphorical expressions are coherent with the principle of ‘transparency’; thus, their meanings in Spanish can be guessed at because they appeal to our recognition of underlying symbolism, even if the translations do not exist as common expressions in Spanish.