Synesthetic Metaphors: Aspects of Intralingual and Interlingual Translation

In the last decade, several studies have been conducted to contrast the way synesthetic metaphors are perceived in various languages, however, these studies have not addressed translation of this type of metaphor. The paper aims to analyze synesthetic metaphors considering aspects of interlingual and intralingual translation in three working languages, English, Latvian and Russian. Samples selected from a variety of literary and promotional texts are analyzed to identify translation challenges and solutions. It is demonstrated that synesthetic metaphors composed following adjective-noun pattern display a relatively high degree of translatability whereas synesthetic metaphors based on linguistic iconicity may pose translation problems.