A COGNITIVE AND CULTURAL APPROACH TO TRANSLATING EMOTIONAL METAPHORS FROM ENGLISH INTO UZBEK

Abstract

This article investigates the translation of emotional metaphors from English into Uzbek from a cognitive and cultural perspective. Emotional metaphors play a crucial role in expressing human feelings, attitudes, and inner experiences, and they are deeply rooted in conceptual systems shaped by bodily experience and cultural norms. Since English and Uzbek belong to different language families and cultural traditions, emotional metaphors often differ in their conceptualization, linguistic realization, and pragmatic use. The study draws on the principles of cognitive linguistics, particularly Conceptual Metaphor Theory, and cultural linguistics to analyze how emotions such as anger, sadness, fear, and happiness are metaphorically expressed in both languages. Through parallel English–Uzbek examples, the article identifies major translation challenges and discusses effective translation strategies, including metaphor preservation, substitution, paraphrasing, and cultural adaptation. The findings show that successful translation of emotional metaphors requires achieving cognitive and cultural equivalence rather than formal similarity, highlighting the importance of cultural awareness and conceptual analysis in translation practice.