Researching deliberate metaphor use in translation: Some methodological considerations

Following the state-of-the-art publication of Slowing Metaphor Down: Elaborating Deliberate Metaphor Theory (Steen, 2023), this paper responds to recent theoretical proposals in metaphor translation research (Wong, 2024) and discusses several methodological issues of identifying and studying deliberate metaphor in translation. Deliberate metaphor is ‘the intentional use of metaphors as metaphors between sender and addressee’ (Steen, 2017, p.1). Recent studies have shown that this new conceptualisation of metaphor has the potential to redefine metaphor proper for metaphor translation research and demands further discussions. While research previously based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory ordinarily studies conventional metaphors ubiquitous in natural language use, research adopting Deliberate Metaphor Theory needs to be more thoughtful regarding methodology. This is because corpus-analytical studies on the distribution of potentially deliberate metaphors across four registers (academic, conversation, fiction, and news) have shown that, on average, only one out of every twenty-three metaphor-related words is potentially deliberate (Reijnierse et al., 2019). The first methodological consideration thus concerns determining the optimal sample size for text-based translation research and using digital corpora to handle large data. Secondly, the boundary of utterances and the relevance of co-text in identifying deliberate metaphor will also be discussed, which boils down to questions of whether and how the Deliberate Metaphor Identification Procedure (Reijnierse et al., 2018), which is developed intralingually, can be readily applied interlingually to translation research. Lastly, this paper will explore the differences between researching metaphor in translation and researching metaphor in interpreting and the possibility of going beyond texts to study deliberate metaphor use in translation by adopting a socio-cognitive approach.