CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR OF FAMILY AND LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY SHORT STORIES: LINGUISTIC AND TRANSLATION ASPECTS

The article considers the language means of verbalization of conceptual metaphors “Family” and “Love” in the contemporary short stories of the British and American writers. The investigation also involves determining the principles and the algorithm of rendering these conceptual metaphors in translation. Concepts are defined as mental structures used by a person in the process of thinking. Concepts in fiction are called artistic concepts. They are verbalized with the help of lexical and stylistic devices and are represented by conceptual metaphors. Conceptual analysis helps to characterize the key concept in the text of fiction, and, at the same time, such analysis can be a good criterion for assessing the quality of literary translation. In this paper, we suggest four stages of conceptual analysis in translation. The first stage includes defining the main concept in the text; the second involves formulating the conceptual metaphor (CM) in the text; determining the lexical and stylistic means of verbalization of the CM. The third stage consists in the text translation and editing, and the fourth-in the comparison of the source and target texts. At the first stage, it is also necessary to consider how the key text concept is represented in the folklore, proverbs, and aphorisms. Our investigation focuses on the concepts of “Family” and “Love”, therefore we chose several famous proverbs as the illustration of these concepts: As the twig is bent, so the tree is inclined; Men build houses, women build homes; A mother’s heart is always with her children. The major concept in the short story “Oliver’s Evolution” by John Updike is: “Family”, and the two microconcepts are “Father” and “Son”. The main character Oliver was growing as a weak boy, vulnerable to different injuries and misfortunes. But when he became an adult and had a family, he started feeling responsibility for his children and his wife, he became the support of his children. The main CM is verbalized by means of the extended metaphor and gradation and can be formulated as FATHER IS THE TREE FOR HIS CHIDREN. Another story “My Mother’s Many Scarves”, published in August 2022, is an example of flash fiction stories, two-three pages long, usually with a very important ending. The concept “Family” includes two microconcepts – “Mother” and “Daughter”. The author Andree Guedron describes the relations of love and understanding between the mother and the daughter. The narrator’s mother liked scarves, and her daughter inherited different things from her: brooches, jewelry. But most valuable was a bag of scarves which the mother bought in different countries. The concept is verbalized, first of all, by numerous repetitions of the noun scarf. The scarves become a metonymic detail, a symbol in the story. That is why the main conceptual metaphor of the text can be formulated as MOTHER’S SCARVES ARE SPIRITUAL INHERITANCE. The daughter realizes that she inherited from the mother not only material things, but also spiritual traits, behavior, emotions. At the same time, the concept “Love” is also realized in this story, as love of the daughter to her mother. Another short story where this concept is actualized is “Bigfoot Love” by E. Gary. It is a fantastic and allegoric story of love of a man and an ape, and the major CM can be formulated as LOVE IS A BIG FORCE. This conceptual metaphor is verbalized with the help of such stylistic devices as hyperbole and extended metaphor. In translation, two major strategies were used to retain the aesthetic and stylistic effect: retaining the conceptual model with the same language expression; retaining the conceptual models with somewhat different linguistic expression, with the use of such translation techniques as synonymic substitution and modulation.