Metaphor and Translation

John Sallis, in the question period, pointed out that 'translate' has an etymology similar to 'metaphor', and he wondered what O'Rourke would say, then, about the relationship between translation and metaphor.

O'Rourke answered the question by saying that, in translating a metaphor from one language to another, one needs to find a similar metaphor, rather than carrying over the metaphor literally. He gave as an example a friend of his who translates for the EU. Once a German delegation was debating with an Irish delegation over some proposal which would apparently waste funds in an irresponsible way. The Germans expressed this in some manner appropriate to German (O'Rourke didn't say.) The translator ignored this and used, to represent the German position to the Irish, the familiar expression, "that's throwing around money like snuff at a wake"--which won the goodwill of the Irish.

But (besides the fact that that was a simile) I took it that this missed the point of Sallis' question. He was wondering whether, e.g. simply to translate 'rouge' as 'red' is to construct a metaphor--say, on the grounds that 'red' plays a role in the English language, similar to the role that 'rouge' plays in the French language. (An idea not unlike Sellars' view of translation.)

Is translation in this ordinary sense metaphor-construction? If not, why not?