Metaphoric language change in the 19th–20th century Catholic translations of the Bible into Lithuanian

The study of metaphorical language in Bible translations is a particularly interesting area of research that can provide valuable information about the process of translation and equivalence between the original text and the translation as well yield new insights into the culture, ideology, and social values of the addressee of a translation. A comparison of metaphorical language in different translations can provide new data about translation processes, diachronic studies of metaphor in translation can reveal patterns of the change of metaphorical language that may reflect the changing socio-cultural context of a translation community. The dissertation studies the extent of metaphorical language used in the Catholic translations of the Gospel of John into Lithuanian, the tendencies and patterns of the change of metaphorical language found in these translations and the systems of conceptual metaphors identified in the Gospel. The study has revealed that religious discourse is a dynamic phenomenon. Translation is one of the dimensions of the change of religious texts and one of the mechanisms of their recontextualisation that may be reflected by the metaphorical language. Metaphorical language of the translations of the Gospel changes over time and this change is influenced by the standard language change, the changing sociocultural context, language of the source of translation, as well by the individual decisions made by the translator