Cognitive Shifts in Translating Metonymic Technical Compounds from English into Arabic: Experiential Compression in Action

This study investigates the translation of English metonymy based technical compounds into Arabic through a synthetic-integrative cognitive linguistic model drawing on Langacker's (1993/2008) reference point framework, Croft's (1993/2002) domain highlighting, Paradis's (2004/2010) zone activation/facetization, Barcelona's (2011) perspectivization and validation criteria, Ruiz de Mendoza's (2011) expansion/reduction operations, and Benczes's (2011) domain networks. A corpus exceeding 500 compounds and their JAAL standardized equivalents spanning 74 domains is analyzed. We show that English compounds typically achieve experiential compression and semantic density via embodied reference point constructions and tightly networked domains. By contrast, communicatively transparent and institutionally coherent Arabic renderings often recalibrate this architecture toward referential functional explicitness through domain reduction, facet suppression, or reference point reorientation. We interpret these shifts not as deficiencies but as systemic reconfigurations shaped by institutional norms, iḍāfah based head–modifier structure, and preferences for terminological transparency. The pattern reveals a cross linguistic asymmetry in metonymy based naming: English privileges experiential compression, whereas standardized Arabic tends toward taxonomic explicitness and systemic clarity. By specifying the cognitive micro operations that redistribute conceptual work in Arabicization—scope adjustment, reference point redistribution, and network realignment—the study advances a metonymy sensitive model of technical translation that evaluates both referential adequacy and the preservation or restructuring of conceptual access paths within domain structured knowledge systems.