Crossing Linguistic and Cultural Boundaries: Translating Figurative Language in Words Above the Clouds

Abstract

Translation plays a vital role in bridging cultures, conveying meanings that often extend beyond the literal, par-ticularly when the source text is rich in figurative language. This study focuses on two main objectives: (1) iden-tifying the types and distributions of figurative language in Evald Flisar's Words Above the Clouds, and (2) ana-lyzing the translation strategies used to render these figurative expressions from English into Indonesian. The re-search adopted a mixed-methods approach, combining both qualitative and quantitative methods to provide a thorough understanding of figurative language translation. A total of 147 instances of figurative language were analyzed using Gibbs’ theory on figurative language classification and Baker’s translation strategies for idioms and figurative expressions. The quantitative findings revealed that metaphors were the most frequent figurative language in both the source text (42.18%) and the target text (43.57%), emphasizing their role in the narrative. The dominant translation strategy was using similar meaning and form (57.82%), followed by paraphrasing (32.65%), reflecting the translator’s intention to preserve both meaning and stylistic impact. In terms of the des-criptive-qualitative analysis, the study highlighted the challenges in adapting figurative language across dif-ferent linguistic and cultural contexts. Although a number of adaptations achieved their goals, others failed by distorting or omitting intended meanings. The study also emphasized the translator's role as a cultural mediator, balancing fidelity to the original text with the need for clarity and accessibility in the target language. Ultimate-ly, this research contributes to cross-cultural communication and offers valuable insights for both translators and scholars, enriching the field of translation studies.