Cognitive Linguistics and BibleTranslation: A Case of Metaphor Translation in the Yoruba Bible

A common passion shared by Bible translation agencies worldwide is the transmission of a Bible that accurately represents the message of the source language texts to the target languages in a way that the message in the former texts is not lost, and the same impact is achieved in the latter. Effective Bible Translation in particular aims at achieving accuracy, fidelity to the source language and meaning in the target language. Through a qualitative research approach which makes use of participant observation and a focus study group, this paper examines the translation of selected New Testament metaphors including but not limited to the HUMAN BEINGS ARE ANIMALS and HUMAN BEINGS ARE OBJECTS Conceptual domains. Their fidelity to source language texts and naturalness in the Yoruba Bible were also examined. Responses gathered identified the types of distortion inherent in metaphor translation, causes of the distortions, and suggested approaches to metaphor translation to achieve the intended purpose. The findings reveal that many Greek metaphors translated into the Yoruba Bible do not convey the message in the source texts and hence require a different approach. Consequently, employing such a cognitive linguistic approach as the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) will not only lead to a translation that is faithful to the source text but also one that is meaningful in the target language, aptly conveys the intended message, and supports quality in translation.
Keywords: Bible Translation, Metaphor, Yoruba Bible, Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Cognitive Linguistics.