The emotional impact of translation: A heart rate study

Metaphorical Sentences Are More Emotionally Engaging than Their Literal Counterparts

“…Twenty-five German native speakers from the Berlin area took part in the experiment (21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35) years, mean age = 26, SD = 4, 15 women). They all had normal or corrected-to-normal vision, and no neurological diseases or learning disabilities.…”

“…At the same time, previous work raises several questions. The Rojo et al (25) study did not control for the number of words or other psycholinguistic or affective properties between metaphorical and literal stimuli. The Bohrn et al (24) work was also unable to control for these variables because it was a meta-analysis.…”

“…Furthermore, a study on the translation of English figurative expressions referring to emotions into Spanish found an increase in heart rate in participants who read translations that used metaphorical language when compared to those who read non-metaphorical translations (25). Since heart rate response can be used as a physiological index of emotional experience (26), this finding suggests that the metaphorical formulations somehow conveyed a more engaging message than the literal renditions (25).…”

Language that conveys emotion: a commentary on Hinojosa, Moreno and Ferré (2019)

“…Recent neurophysiological research has shown that figurative language evokes stronger emotional responses in readers than literal language Citron & Goldberg, 2014;Forgács et al, 2012;Rojo, Ramos, & Valenzuela, 2014). That is, a meta-analysis of 23 neuroimaging studies of figurative language processing and experimental studies have shown significantly enhanced activation of the left amygdala in response to figurative compared to literal language, among other regions of the emotion as well as extended-language networks Citron, Cacciari, Funcke, Hsu, & Jacobs, 2019a;Citron & Goldberg, 2014;Citron, Güsten, Michaelis, & Goldberg, 2016a;Citron, Michaelis, & Goldberg, 2019b;Forgács et al, 2012).…”

Language that conveys emotion: a commentary on Hinojosa, Moreno and Ferré (2019)

“…Recent neurophysiological research has shown that figurative language evokes stronger emotional responses in readers than literal language (Bohrn et al, 2012;Citron & Goldberg, 2014;Forgács et al, 2012;Rojo, Ramos, & Valenzuela, 2014). That is, a meta-analysis of 23 neuroimaging studies of figurative language processing and experimental studies have shown significantly enhanced activation of the left amygdala in response to figurative compared to literal language, among other regions of the emotion as well as extended-language networks (Bohrn et al, 2012;Citron, Cacciari, Funcke, Hsu, & Jacobs, 2019a;Citron & Goldberg, 2014;Citron, Güsten, Michaelis, & Goldberg, 2016a;Citron, Michaelis, & Goldberg, 2019b;Forgács et al, 2012).…”