The metaphor is made more complex by the fact that white and black are scen to be relative, not absolute, qualities, influenced by perception: white is coloured in the sun, white is black at night.

The cognitive stylistic approach to metaphor sces metapbor as cognitive rather than linguistic. The emphasis in understanding the metaphor lies less with whether a particular instance is a simile or an instance of metaphor proper and more with the cognitive metaphors upon which the linguistic realizations are based. But how does this perception'of the metaphors as cognitive rather than merely linguistic affect translation?

A first important point is that conceptual metaphors, so far as they are embodied, are likely to be universal. Metaphors such as LOVEIS WAR and GOOD IS UP, discussed by both Stockwell (2002a) and Lakoff & Johnson (1980), will be familiar to most cultures. But not all conceptual metaphors are embodied; many have to do with conventions, and these can vary culturally. GOOD IS WHITE and BAD IS BLACK are not universal: good is not necessarily white in every culture; in Chinese culture it can also suggest misfortune, according to Biedermann (1992:380). Dark does not equal sinister in every culture: sweeps are lucky, especially in Germany; there is cultural difference between English and German here. But in fact the concepts of white and black are more complex than this in English and German: ghosts, for example, are white and are not necessarily considered good; black is the colour of priestly robes and can suggest soberness. And the symbols can be used ironically. Blanca paloma (white dove) in Spanish is often used to refer to a person who merely pretends to be good and innocent while being in reality the opposite. While such idiomatic ironical uses are perhaps less common in English or German, they are conceptually possible. It would be interesting to explore the symbolism of black clothes and their various connotations in this resppect.

A second point is that metaphor, especially in literary texts, also frequently serves to create allegory. That is, just as the world of the fairy tale might suggest a parallel, real world when we read the story of Snow White. or the Morgenstern poem about two donkeys, so the world of the poem can suggest a set of historical events. This poem, in a much less explicit way than 'Beim Lesen der Zeitung", can be seen as a poem about the Holocaust. What appears good (white) is only good so long as it is day. What is to come is good (snow-white and the seven dwarves) so long as it is day. But as in the fairy tale which contains the evil queen, so here waiting to enter the scene is something evil, a destroyer of innocence.

These considerations will mean that the position of words such as white and black in the English translation needs to be carefully thought out, so that the contrast is foregrounded, In the source text, "weiss" and "-wittchen", white, appear in initial or final position in lines except in the final stanza, where "weiss" is less prominent and the more prominent position is taken by "schwarz", black. This is surely highly significant. The English translation (Boase-Beier & Vivis 1995:39) translates the second stanza as:

In the sun

that white glittes

in every colour

But I would now argue that "white" should be in a more prominent position, not an easy thing to do in English with its stricter word-order.

The consideration of the cognitive import of metaphor will also mean that the position of sun and night will need to foreground the contrast, as they indeed do in the translation.

For a further example of how a cognitive view of metaphor might affect translation, let us consider Meister's poem 'Am Rande des Meers' (1979:44). The title, which literally means 'at the edge of the sea', is picked up in the second line with the idiom "zu Rande", as in zu Rande bringen, to manage to do something, and at the end of the poem with "Wegrand", the edge of the path. The poem considers the meaning of idioms, both literal and metapborical. For the translation, I have opted for 'Near the Top of the Hill' (Boase-Beier 2003c:46-47), because I assume that the focus on idioms and language is of

most importance in the poem, and the way that thc same expression can undergo shifts of meaning in different contexts. Using this title in the English version allowed me to transform the idiom into "on top of" "the path to the top", and so on, and to preserve the contrast of journey and destination. However, it would be quite possible to argue that the cognitive basis of "at the edge" is not the same as "on top of", and that therefore the English translation has made a radical conceptual change. My translation takes the notion of metaphor itself as a cognitive and linguistic phenomenon to be central to the poem, but a view which placed more emphasis on the embodied basis of metaphor (GOOD IS UP) would possibly not accept this translation as having an appropriate cognitive basis.

Though metaphor is seen as a typically poetic figure, it is used in many other texts, as Lakoff & Johnson (1980) have shown. Becausc metaphors are cognitive, and structure the way we conceive the world, we would expect to find many conceptual meaphors in popular science texts, as they both act as models for observed phenomena and, being largely universal not only across languages but across individuals, are useful tools of communication. The metaphor ILLNESS IS A HUMAN BEING is commonly used in such texts; for example, BSE is described thus:"as though a competent team of chambermaids in a respectable hotel were taking lessons from a boss who insists on making apple-pie beds" (Independent, 10.12.1995). In another newspaper article (Stern online) cancer is compared to an unidentified person.  In the latre case, are told that tumours do not just form secondary tumours anywhere, but "bereiten deren künftigen Standort schr sorgfaltig vor", literally, that they prepare their future location very carefully. This makes it casier to see the cancer as an enemy to be fought. The effect is heightened by the common use of daughter tumours in German for secondary tumours and expressions such as "mobilize". "travel", "assist" in this text. It is important that these metaphors are kept in translation, because they have potential consequences for the way the efficacy of a cure is described, and also, it could be argued, for the faith a patient places in a cure.

Conceptual metaphor reflects, and can influence, the way we pursue our thinking. This is especially true of metaphors in scientific texts for the mind itself. If the mind is seen as a sponge,different theories will be explored and different types of tests developed than will be the case if it is seen as a Swiss army knife. So the metaphor used can inot be replaced in translation with something in the target culture which has different characteristics. Of course, this is highly unlikely to happen in a text discussing models of the mind: here the type of model is of such obvious importance that it would not be changed by a translator. It is more likely to happen in a text not directly concerned with the metaphors themselves. So, for example, Midgley's joke (2001:4) that "the Swiss Army does not consist only of knives" could easily get translated as (in back translation) the German Army does not consist of knives or the English Army does not consist of knives if it were understood as saying that an army is more than weapons, rather than that the Swiss army knife is a poor metaphor for mind because it lacks the human (or divine element.

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