Choices for Figurative Language in Literary Translation: A Stratal Perspective

The use of literary devices, especially figurative language, often poses challenges for literary translators. Existing research still lacks (1) theory-driven analyses grounded in actual translation choices and (2) sufficient attention to linguistic factors influencing how different types of figurative language are translated. To address these gaps, we pose three core research questions: (1) How has figurative language been translated in actual literary texts? (2) What patterns emerge in the translation of different types of figurative language? (3) What linguistic factors may possibly account for the variation in translation choices across different types of figurative language? This article adopts systemic functional linguistics as the theoretical framework, and examines translation choices for figurative language used in six Chinese literary texts and their English translations. Our analysis reveals considerable variations in the translation choices adopted among different types of figurative language. We propose relating the tendency to retain or omit a certain type of figurative language to the language stratum with which the type is more strongly associated. In broad terms, the likelihood of making translation shifts decreases when a certain type of figurative language is more closely related to relatively high strata. The current study makes a preliminary step towards a systematic investigation of the translation of figurative language, and more importantly, it introduces an SFL-based stratal perspective to elucidate possible linguistic motivations underlying translators’ decisions across different types of figurative language.