Creative Translation Quality Indicators

In today's information-rich world, translators play a crucial role as mediators between authors of source texts and readers in different language contexts, encountering challenges related to the translation of idiomatic expressions, cultural nuances, and especially metaphorical imagery. Metaphors in political discourse not only enhance language expressiveness but also influence public awareness and shape perceptions of political reality (Budaev, 2020). This research focuses on journal articles of public-political discourse published in the electronic version of The Economist newspaper, aiming to explore translation strategies for conveying metaphor in journalistic texts that prioritize factual accuracy over creativity, unlike literary texts. By examining the translation of both trite (non-creative) and original (creative) metaphors, this study aims to establish a systematic approach to translating metaphors and to identify creative translation quality indicators, essential for producing optimal metaphor translation in public-political discourse. The study employs a Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) and conducts a comparative analysis of source language (SL) and target language (TL) lexical items to guide translation decisions. The qualitative analysis of creative translation solutions (lexical transformations) based on the concept of representativeness of translation proposed by V.N. Komissarov allowed us to determine the creative translation quality indicators and to analyze the frequency of retention of one of the indicators affecting the quality of creative translation. Reflexive semantic analysis of lexical items of the SL and lexical items of the TL accompanies the assessment of translation decisions. The research outcomes include a decision-making algorithm for conveying metaphors in the TL, the percentage distribution of translation choices in public-political discourse, a list of indicators impacting the quality of creative translations, and a structured evaluation of creative translation decisions in terms of percentage distribution. Further analysis of additional materials is recommended to enhance the evaluation associated with each translation decision. Keywords: public-political discourse, creative translation quality indicators, lexical transformations, metaphor, imagery