Metaphor and Metonymy: A Contrastive Study With Reference to English-Arabic Translation

Abstract

This paper deals with two figures of speech namely, Metonymy and Metaphor. Owing to their importance in every language, we have tackled these two figures to highlight some points of differences and similarities and to verify that metonymy is less suggestive than metaphor as far as meaning is concerned. Moreover, we try to draw attention to metonymy, a figure of speech overlooked over the time. Furthermore, we mention some points related to the translation of each of these two figures of speech. Ten sentences are selected from different books to be our sample, and given to four translators who produce nearly similar translations for each sentence. We have tackled only the similar renditions in our analysis. After examining both figures, we have found out that metonymy is less suggestive and difficult than metaphor as far as meaning and translation are concerned. This is so because the former has a direct association with the tenor, the vehicle and the ground, whereas the latter has a propriety sharing association between these three items, and in this case the nature of the ground cannot be predictable.