METAPHORICITY OF THE DOORS LYRICS AND THE WAYS OF RENDERING METAPHORS IN RUSSIAN TRANSLATIONS

Abstract

The research is focused on metaphor as a stylistic means to create imagery in the song discourse. The study material includes The Doors lyrics and their translations into Russian. The aim of this research is to study metaphors in The Doors lyrics and to analyze the ways used to render these metaphors into Russian. For this purpose we synthesized a definition of metaphor suitable to analyze tropes in the song discourse, gave an integrated classification of translation transformations compiled on the basis of the classifications existing in the theory of translation and suitable for the aim of this research. Applying this classification to the material of the research in the course of comparative analysis of the original lyrics and their Russian translations, we studied metaphors in The Doors lyrics and the ways these metaphors are rendered into Russian. The analysis revealed the double function of metaphors in the material analyzed. On the one hand, songs appeal to mass audience, including its low-educated part, hence, the song discourse is characterized by universal, traditional, common images, understandable to everyone, and simple means to express them. At the same time, metaphors in the analyzed texts are especially bright, with a strong emotional impact. On the other hand, the lyrics often have another semantic stratum appealing to more refined audience and containing more elaborate images and sophisticated metaphors. The research has shown that the translators managed to render most original images of the English song texts and expressing them metaphors into Russian choosing effective ways of translation, necessary translation transformations. Lexical and lexico-grammatical translation transformations, especially modulation and generalization are the most frequent transformations used by the translators of the analyzed songs to render metaphors into Russian. The results of this research can be used to further analyze the song discourse in the cultural, stylistic and translation aspects.