Translating metaphorical mind style: machinery and ice metaphors in Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Abstract

Studies on mind style have demonstrated how linguistic choices influence the way the narrative world is constructed and consequently understood by the reader. Yet whether and how such mind style can be translated into different languages and cultures remains an under-investigated area of research. The current paper builds on the extensive analysis by Semino and Swindlehurst of the metaphorical mind style created in Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest by examining how the systematic patterns of metaphor in the novel were translated into Dutch. Focusing on machinery and ice metaphors, this paper shows that idiomaticity at times appears to be a driving force behind translation decisions that disrupt the stylistic coherence of narrator Bromden's mind style, sacrificing metaphors for the sake of target-language fluency and acceptability. This paper argues that stylistic coherence should take priority, and that translators should steer clear from idiomatic and ‘normal’ solutions and force the target language and culture to take on these idionsyncratic metaphors to re-create the novel's stylistically coherent mind style. If the metaphors are changed or deleted, this means that the reader of the translation will inevitably be presented with a different narrative world.