The Challenges and Strategies of Metaphor Translation in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream into Arabic: A Focus on Shakespeare's Original Metaphors

Abstract

The study addresses the problems of translation and the strategies adopted in translating Shakespeare's metaphorical language in A Midsummer Night's Dream into Arabic. Using   Lakoff & Johnson^’s (1980 ) Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and  Newmark(1988), Dickens’s ( 2002),  t he translation analysis models;  study contrasts seven central metaphors in the source English text with their treatment in four Arabic translations done by renowned translators: : Jabra  (1963),  Mandour (1968),  Mutran (1912), and  Al-Bazei (1995). The study employs comparative text analysis for identifying translation strategies like literal translation, cultural adaptation, semantic expansion, metaphorical substitution, and preservation of ambiguity. Results indicate that universal conceptual metaphors (LOVE IS A JOURNEY, LIFE IS A DREAM) are more effectively translated than culture-specific allusions (mythological allusions, theatrical conventions). The research demonstrates that effective metaphor translation is a balance between cultural appropriateness and linguistic precision, and compound approaches are most effective to ensure semantic accuracy and poetic resonance. The study contributes to translation theory through the demonstration of how cognitive linguistics principles can inform cross-cultural literary translation practice, more specifically Arabic-English literary translation contexts.