Back to Basics: Transfer as a Metaphorical Process

This paper is a reflection about written translation’s transfer sub-competence as a two-folded process: a first moment of abstraction while reading the source text and a second of concretion writing the target text. These two mechanisms correlate directly with the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axis of language as exposed by Saussure and Jakobson. If we consider them as the two basic kinds of synecdoches, generalizing and particularizing, the result would be that transfer between a pair of languages functions exactly as metaphors do, according to the neo-rhetoric theories of the Group μ of Liège. In our line of reasoning, translation is considered mainly from the point of view of a linguistic and, therefore, mental process. However, translation competence is not exactly a linguistic competence and its nature seems to be completely different. Obviously, it works with pairs of languages instead of a single one, but it can still be related to some processes observed by Jakobson in aphasic patients. These linguistic mechanisms clearly connected with translation can be defined in terms of rhetoric figures, especially tropes. We add an example of Turkish-Spanish translation analyzing the problems presented by the differences of syntactic structures in both languages.