Translation and interpretation of proverbs
The appealing aspect of proverbs is that they are down-to-earth and practical. However, that does not mean that they are easy to interpret. In fact, because a Proverb is so true-to-life, it is possible to find contradictions such as in the books of Proverbs 26:4-5 Do not answer a fool according to his folly; Answer the fool according to his folly.... Figures of speech, vivid comparisons, alliterations, and other rhetorical devices are freely used in proverbs. In order to understand proverbs correctly, one must use imagination to enter the world created by the figures of speech. Trying to draw theoretical statements or philosophical logic from the proverbs misses the point. This means that proverbs need to be interpreted from the words of the imagery to the meaning of the imagery to similar meaning in our cultural context. Finally, Proverbs must be read as a collection as no single proverb can express all the truth about any given subject. In recent times most written collections of proverbs appear in the local and English translation.
This has certainly made the proverbs accessible to a larger readership, but by the same token, has had implications for the status of the proverbs themselves. Stylistic and cultural problems can emerge during translation and are often difficult to resolve. Since proverbs are necessarily part of traditional culture, they tend to characteristically use the ordinary manner of speech. If there is any such thing as an English proverbial vernacular, then the translation of proverbs into English has the potential to distort the manner of speech used in their original local or napresupposes the computation of the literal meaning of the utterance.
In the second stage, the listener determines if this literal rendering is appropriate, taking into account various contextual constraints, such as for example, knowledge of the immediate situation or other relevant background knowledge. If the literal meaning is found to be appropriate, then further processing is stopped. If, however, it is determined to be defective, processing continues into stage three, in which the listener attempts to construct a new, figurative meaning for the utterance, consistent with the context provided.
First of all, determination of a figurative meaning of any proverbial expression is obligatorily preceded by the analysis of the sentence's literal meaning. Secondly, comprehending proverbial expressions requires identification of a defective literal meaning before searching for a figurative meaning. If the literal meaning of a sentence makes sense in context, figurative meaning will be ignored and not searched for. It is only the failure to provide the right context in which the literal meaning might make sense that triggers the listener to seek an alternative, figurative interpretation.
Finally, the traditional view demands that the derivation of figurative meanings requires additional work and special cognitive processes, by means of which the listener determines what the speaker might mean. This is in contrast to literal language comprehension, which, traditionally viewed, requires very little cognitive effort. Under the traditional view of proverb processing, according to which figurative language understanding necessitates the earlier literal analysis of proverbial expressions, these expressions should take additional effort to be processed compared with literal speech. Numerous recent reaction-time studies have repeatedly shown that figurative language utterances need not take longer to understand than literal utterances. But the researcher disagrees with these writers that in this modern world, it is very difficult for people to understand figurative languages because most of the native languages have been corrupted by the Western dialects, literary education and standard of living have also change. These have contributed to a rapid breakage in the chain of understanding figurative speech. But in the case of literal utterances, both the traditional and the contemporary listener pick what is said and the meaning at once.