English-Thai translation strategies of similes and metaphors in the merchant of Venice

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the strategies used in the translation of English similes and metaphors in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice into the Thai version called Venice Vanich by H.M. King Rama VI based on the frameworks of Pierini’s (2007) translation strategies of simile and Newmark’s (1981) translation strategies of metaphor. Moreover, Baker’s (2011) notions of the problems of non-equivalence at word level and translation strategies for dealing with non-equivalence at word level are employed to analyze the translation of the vehicles/images of the similes and metaphors. According to the findings, in the translation of similes, literal translation is the most frequently used strategy. Meanwhile, none of the similes was treated by using replacement of the vehicle with gloss. However, apart from those proposed by Pierini, there is another applicable strategy found in this research: translation of simile by metaphor. As for the findings on the translation analysis of metaphors, translation of metaphor by simile is the most frequently used. In addition, most vehicles/images of the similes and metaphors were translated with non-equivalence into Thai. The major influential factor that poses the non-equivalence challenges is the use of culture-specific concepts in the source text. However, the translator used various strategies to tackle non-equivalence to convey the meaning into Thai successfully, such as translation by omission, translation by a more general word, translation by paraphrase using unrelated words, translation by cultural substitution, and translation by a more specific word.

Keywords: Translation Strategies, Similes, Metaphors, The Merchant of Venice