Obraz obrazu: strategia przekładu metafory w tekstach mistycznych

Mystical experience, by its very nature inconceivable for the human mind and incommunicable in human language, becomes revealed in images: it is recorded in metaphors. And since metaphor is a medium of the mystical, its translation is a task of great importance, where a translator must adopt a certain strategy not only for its single occurrence but for a whole text. Analysis of this problem requires a number of definitions: first of all, a definition of the mystical experience, and then the definition of metaphor. The tools used in the present paper are provided by cognitive metaphor theory. Another necessary step is determination of translation strategy and of its relation to the translation of metaphor. This theoretical introduction will be followed by presentation of selected English mystics and their texts in the original and in translation into Polish. Analysis of the original is to show the presence and status of metaphors in each examined text, while analysis of the translation will focus on the cognitive understanding of the concept of translation equivalence in reference to these metaphors.