This doctoral study explores whether engineering metaphors are used in the translation of an engineering text from English to Malay and examines how the usage of metaphors in the target text (TT) compares to that in the source text (ST). The study focuses on Holtzapple and Reese’s “Foundations of Engineering” and its Malay version “Asas Kejuruteraan” translated by Juneta Zawawi. The “Metaphor Identification Procedure” (MIP) by the Pragglejaz Group is applied in the process of gathering examples while the Cognitive Metaphor Theory is used for the purposes of metaphor analysis. A combination of Newmark’s (1988), Deignan’s (2005) and Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) classifications of metaphor are used to categorize the SL and TL metaphorical expressions. Metaphor translation procedures identified were benchmarked to those proposed by Newmark (1988). Analysis of the 174 ST and 82 TT engineering metaphors reveals that the use of metaphorical language does indeed characterize the English technical text and its translation into Malay. Identifying equivalence in the TL discloses somewhat similar problems to those that are present in literary metaphor translation. The ease of translation and the identification of suitable engineering metaphors are not determined solely by the type of metaphor but rather are also partially dependent on cultural and linguistic factors. Metaphor translation procedures as outlined by Newmark are found to be unable to account for all the examples, which results in the creation of the two variants of one of his translation procedures, the proposal of three new ones that are identified and the abandonment of two of his procedures. The selection of translation procedure appears to be dependent not only on the metaphor type but also on whether the translator simply decides to use equivalent SL metaphors or non-metaphorical expressions in the TL. It is also highly likely that the type of text being translated plays a role.
Keywords: metaphor in engineering, English to Malay translation, specialized translation, engineering discourse, “Metaphor Identification Procedure” (MIP), Newmark’s metaphor translation procedures, metaphor translation, Foundations of Engineering, Asas Kejuruteraan