Employing cognitive metonymy theory in the analysis of semantic relations between source and target text in translation

This article offers a model of translation which frames semantic relations between source- and target-text elements in terms of metonymy, and translation in terms of metonymic processing. Translators/interpreters constantly use approximations rather than exact one-to-one correspondences in their work, as meaning making is by nature partial and built-in matches between language systems do not exist. Approximation is identified as a recurrent theme in Translation Studies, while Metonymy Studies is seen as providing a toolkit for describing in detail the approximate semantic relations between source- and target-text elements. Models from Metonymy Studies are applied to two translation case studies and a translation revision case study. An original typology of metonymic relations is proposed based on whether or not source and target are encoded linguistically as vehicle and/or topic. It is concluded that the semantic relations between source- and target-text elements in translation are distinctive in two respects: 1) they are characterized by facetization and zone activation rather than metonymization; 2) they are examples of Topic metonymy (both source and target concepts are encoded) and Code-switching metonymy (the source and target concepts are encoded in different languages)