Figure de style que le traducteur rend par une autre expression, semblable ou alternative, qui a la même signification de base afin que le destinataire puisse mieux s’y identifier. Compte tenu de ses implications linguistiques et culturelles, elle requiert parfois des procédés de traduction plus complexes, plus variés, et plus créatifs. 

La traduction de n’importe quelle métaphore ne peut pas avoir lieu avant que le traducteur n’ait mis au jour la nature de la métaphore, ainsi que son statut, c’est-à-dire la fonction particulière que cette métaphore particulière joue dans ce texte particulier.

1- En linguistique, la métaphore désigne une « figure de style qui consiste généralement à exprimer une notion abstraite par un mot concret et qui prend la forme d’une comparaison elliptique fondée sur l’analogie existant entre deux objets, deux notions, deux situations présentant un caractère commun ».

2- En traductologie, il existe un lien entre la fonction d’un texte et la fonction de la métaphore. 

Figure of speech replaced by other expressions, metaphorical or not, having the same meaning and a similar effect on the target audience. Because its transfer from one language and culture to another one may be hampered by linguistic and cultural differences, it requires sometimes more complex, more diversified and more creative translation procedures.

Metaphor, as a typical feature of communication, presents a challenge for translation too, both for the practicing translator and for its treatment in the discipline of Translation Studies. In the literature on translation, the two main issues have been, firstly, the translatability of metaphors, and secondly, the elaboration of potential translation procedures. In most cases, the argumentation is based on a traditional understanding of metaphor as a figure of speech, as a linguistic expression which is substituted for another expression (with a literal meaning), and whose main function is the stylistic embellishment of the text. It is only recently that a cognitive approach to metaphor has been applied to Translation Studies.

1- In linguistics, the metaphor is « a rhetorical element that generally involves using a concrete word to express an abstract concept and which takes the form of an elliptical comparison based on an analogy between two objects, two concepts, or two situations that possess a common characteristic ».

2- Peter Newmark presents six types of metaphors: dead metaphor, cliché metaphor, stock/standard metaphor, adapted metaphor, recent metaphor, and original metaphor, in . He also presents seven procedures to translate them in . They are: reproducing the same image in the TL replacing the image in the SL with a standard TL image which does not clash with the TL culture, translation of metaphor by simile, (retaining the image), translation of metaphor (or simile) by simile plus sense, or occasionally metaphor plus sense conversion of metaphor to sense, deletion, and translation of metaphor by the same metaphor combined with sense.