COGNITIVE TRANSFORMATION OF METAPHORICAL MODELS IN THE TRANSLATION OF ELKE HEIDENREICH’S “EIN SENDER HAT GEBURTSTAG” AND “KARL, BOB DYLAN UND ICH”

This article examines how metaphorical expressions in two short stories by Elke Heidenreich from the collection Der Welt den Rücken, “Ein Sender hat Geburtstag” and “Karl, Bob Dylan und ich”, can be rendered in Ukrainian. It focuses on how the choice of a Ukrainian equivalent affects the figurative model, narrative perspective, and characterization. The study draws on the German texts and proposes Ukrainian renderings for analysis; these renderings are not quotations from a published translation. The method compares the contextual and basic meanings of figurative expressions, identifies their source and target domains, and examines their function within each episode. Translation choices are assessed according to whether they retain or alter an image, how much they make explicit, and how they affect irony or a speaker’s emotional voice. Metaphorical usage, biblical allusion, and literal references to space are distinguished. The analysis of a promotional slogan shows how the contrast between a promise of accessibility and restricted physical access creates irony without turning the literal scene into a further metaphor. In “Karl, Bob Dylan und ich”, images of decline, bodily injury, the boundary of the home, and light connect experiences of loss with the possibility of closeness. Translating them requires attention to their recurrence across episodes, rather than to isolated expressions alone. In “Ein Sender hat Geburtstag”, metaphors of conflict and rapid consumption contribute to a satirical portrayal of a media institution, while the editor’s assessment does not always coincide with the narrator’s perspective. The analysis suggests that a familiar Ukrainian idiom may preserve a conceptual relationship while weakening an individual speaker’s register. An explanatory rendering, in turn, may improve clarity at the expense of concision. The findings concern selected examples and proposed translations; they establish neither the frequency of metaphors in the collection nor the strategies of a published translator.