The use of metaphors in political feature articles translated form English into Arabic : a contrastive-critical discourse analysis

Abstract

Metaphors constitute a key element of political discourse in just about any language. That being said, little has been done to investigate the use of metaphors in political-feature articles translated from English into Arabic. Therefore, with the aim of analysing how metaphors are employed in such political-feature articles, a set of three feature articles: (1) authentic Arabic feature articles, (2) authentic English feature articles, (3) and the translations of the English feature articles into Arabic, was examined to investigate how writers employ metaphors in each of those datasets. The authentic texts, written in both Arabic and English, involve Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in which texts are analysed in order to examine how writers in both languages employ metaphors in the original texts. The translated texts from English into Arabic involve CDA and Contrastive Analysis (CA) wherein texts are analysed before being compared and contrasted with the authentic texts. The results of the study show a significant level of reliance on metaphors for communicating political messages with the target audiences in the STs. This, in turn, requires an adequate translation from English into Arabic so as to preserve the intended messages. In other words, the present study shows the critical importance of accurately translating political metaphors from English into Arabic,which could be further justified from the perspective of conveying the most appropriate and accurate message to the target audience.

Date of Award	2017
Original language	English