Cancer metaphors in scientific popularization articles and their translation into Spanish

Abstract

Capitalizing on the insights from Conceptual Metaphor Theory and a growing number of studies on the role of metaphor in the health sciences, this study explores cancer metaphors in a corpus of 6 English scientific popularization articles published by the New York Times and Scientific American and their corresponding translations into Spanish. Framed within a cognitive-discursive approach, a descriptive-contrastive methodology was applied to examine metaphor patterns used to talk about cancer and immunotherapy and explore their Spanish translations. Metaphorical expressions (MEs) in the English corpus were identified, described and quantified. In line with previous studies, Violence MEs of the prototypical warfare variety were found to be recurrently used to conceptualize the cancer-patient relationship and to explain the workings of immunotherapy. Mechanicist metaphors were also recurrent to explain the functioning of the immune system and depict cancer scientists’ actions. Other comparatively less recurrent patterns were also identified. The analysis went beyond the description of the linguistic form and considered the textual, discursive, rhetorical and cognitive functioning of metaphors. Their textual function proved to be of great importance for translation. MEs were observed to occur in chains and construct image-rich scenarios serving a rhetorical intensifying function and lending cohesion to the text. Special consideration was given to their cognitive functioning as the prevailing metaphorical frames reveal an antagonistic conceptualization of health and disease that may influence lay audiences’ thinking and acting concerning cancer. Second, the analysis concentrated on Spanish translations. Similarities and differences as to conceptual domains and local and global effects were observed. Results indicate that MEs are at times simply dropped or substituted with nonmetaphorical material. Even in cases of retention, the actual MEs chosen in Spanish are often less image-rich and less specific than the English ones. Micro level choices were examined and found to be significant for they produce different ideational and discursive effects. The overall results suggest metaphors must not be considered as an individual linguistic phenomenon as they do not occur in isolated, unconnected and sporadic form but rather in a patterned way. In order to employ MEs that bring about the same local and global effects, translators need to be aware of metaphors’ essential multifunctionality and their contribution to textual connectedness