Zombie Gods Seep Goo : A Study on the Translation of Imagery

Abstract: Abstract Imagery can be one of the difficulties a translator faces. It can be difficult to transfer the same image in a metaphor, simile, metaphorical adjective or a cultural reference to the target text. The aim of this study is to look at what translation strategies can be used for the translation of said imagery. The method is a quantitative analysis of the source text’s imagery types and a qualitative analysis of the translation strategies used. Since the language pair come from the same language family and have a lot of similarities in terms of culture, literal translations, equivalences and, in some cases, adaptions were suspected to be more frequent. The results show that for metaphors, similes and metaphorical adjectives literal translations were the most frequent ones, followed by equivalents carrying the same connotations, for metaphors and adjectives. Adaption, which is perhaps not really translation at all, was frequently used for the cultural references due to the target oriented approach. Omission and neutral explanations were used where the loss of information did not affect the presumed understanding of the target text reader. Transference, transposition and calque were used to some extent but not as frequent as suspected. In conclusion, when two languages are as similar as Swedish and English, a translator can go far by using literal translation or, where applicable, equivalents.