Idioms

Book Description
Bringing together disciplines such as news translation, media studies, linguistics and financial discourse, this book addresses the issue of English-Greek idiom translation in the news press. It adopts a novel idiom-typology which draws its main concepts from psychology and gives a detailed description of the idiom-translation strategies employed in the Greek financial press. More specifically, this book explores the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic changes that idioms undergo when they are translated and proposes possible parameters that license a particular idiom-translation strategy to be used in preference to another. It is suggested that the four major tendencies dominant in idiom translation, namely idiom adherence, literalization, deletion and compensation, are determined by syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, cognitive and textual parameters. On these grounds, a new idiom-translation model is presented where it is assumed that idiom translation is genre-sensitive, thus pointing to the context-sensitive nature of idiom translation expected to influence the translation quality of genres.

German and Lithuanian Idioms with Gastronomic Components The topic originates from L. Feuerbach's quote " Man is what he eats ". It allows the assumption that idioms with gastronomic components could reveal relevant aspects of the linguistic world-view. The object of research are German and Lithuanian idioms containing denominations of groceries, food and beverages. The research aims to compare these idioms in both languages. The results are based on the corpora created using lexicographic sources. There are 193 denominations classified into 20 groups in the corpora: 82 components are found in both languages, 111 are language-specific (48 German, 63 Lithuanian). The total number of units analyzed includes 830 German and 1310 Lithuanian idioms.

The origins of many everyday phrases are unknown to most, but this doesn’t prevent us from using them freely in our everyday language. Idioms tell us much about how language interacts with culture and how it evolves. Gareth Carrol explains why idioms are such a fruitful area of study.

Статья посвящена функционированию идиом в произведениях немецкого писателя Эриха Кестнера, представителя литературного направления «Новая вещественность». Рассмотрены основные функции фразеологизмов, установ-лен ряд закономерностей, описывающих их распределение по произведениям разных жанров, охарактеризована роль лексико-семантических групп идиом в создании единства художественного текста. Ключевые слова: авторский стиль, фразеология, немецкий язык, стилистика художественного текста, идиомы.

This article is devoted to the usage of phraseological units in works of German writer Erich Kästner, who belonged to the literary school "Neue Sachlichkeit". In the focus of our attention are functions of idioms and also correlations, which characterize their distribution in texts of different genres, as well as the constutive role of lexical semantic groups of idioms in creating unity of the literary text.

The constructional literature has encouraged us to see words as constructions (both constructions and words combine syntactic, phonological and pragmatic conventions) and constructions as words (constructions license phrasal signs that need special explanations for at least some of their properties—morpho-lexical, semantic, pragmatic, or distributional—beyond what can be known about their component parts). But these analogies obscure some fundamental differences: (a) many (if not most) idiomatic expressions are like sing a different tune, in having syntactically manipulable subparts (as in, e.g., Now a different tune is being sung because the administration’s spying […] has come to light), and are thus not realistically treated as ‘words with spaces’ (Kay et al. 2012); and (b) it strains credulity to assert that single signs (words and lexemes) are the same thing as combinations of signs (phrases). How can we strike a balance between ‘meaning by convention’ and ‘meaning by composition’ when we are analyzing complex expressions with idiomatic properties? In this talk, I will address this question by outlining a lexicalist implementation of the idiomaticity continuum, based on Sign-Based Construction Grammar (Sag 2012, Sag et al. 2012, Michaelis 2012).

Enrique Cabrejas nos relata de modo llano su experiencia personal con un descubrimiento extraordinario. El 21 de Abril de 2012 consiguió lo que parecía imposible: descifrar la escritura ibérica. Un hito sin precedentes en la historia de la escritura, solo comparable a los realizados por Champollion, al descodificar la escritura jeroglífica egipcia o Michael Ventris con la escritura de Creta.
Hijos de Titanes • El Secreto Íbero de Enrique Cabrejas lo convierte en un referente destacado a nivel mundial en historia y lingüística. Las innumerables evidencias, pruebas y significados que reporta, antes desconocidos, son referencia obligada para todos aquellos que quieran comprender la historia, la lengua antigua e, incluso, también la moderna de nuestro país, o para quienes en el futuro deseen estudiarla e investigarla en profundidad, más si cabe desde el ámbito académico.
Hasta la fecha, el significado de esas enigmáticas escrituras no se conocía, aunque desde la comunidad científica se le dio validez a un origen indiscutible celta. Estas páginas nos revelan qué hay de cierto en todo ello. La trascripción, de numerosos textos íberos y celtíberos, entre los cuales se encuentran los más emblemáticos: el Bronce de Luzaga, las Placas Botorrita I y I-II, la Tésera de Froehner son demostrables científicamente.
Cabrejas nos sorprende con un desenlace tan inesperado como fascinante que va más allá del descifrado de una lengua antigua. Capaz de responder a las preguntas que se han formulado los historiadores, lingüistas, investigadores y expertos durante décadas: ¿Quiénes fueron los íberos y los celtíberos? ¿Cómo se llamaban? ¿De dónde vinieron? ¿Cuáles fueron sus costumbres? ¿Qué escritura es la ibérica? ¿Cuál es la ancestral y extraordinaria cultura que nos legaron?
HIJOS DE TITANES • EL SECRETO ÍBERO  nos ilumina y nos abre los ojos, no solo para saber quiénes fuimos sino para conocer quiénes somos. Todo está implícito en su escritura y por primera vez ve la luz a través de esta imprescindible publicación.

Metaphorical or allegorical in nature and deeply embedded in Chinese culture, yànyǔ 諺語 ‘proverbs’ are fundamentally a colloquial form of idiomatic expressions. Yànyǔ consist of complete sentences with different types of predicate; some yànyǔs have structural or lexical variants and stylistic synonyms.

Idiomatic expressions are linguistic expressions, grammatical forms, phrases or words that possess a figurative meaning which cannot be predicted from the individual components or literal meanings of the constituent parts (Fraser, 1970; Makkai 1972; Kovecses and Szabo, 1996). Idiomatic expressions play an important role in human communication, since their emotive and cultural connotations facilitate the expression of meaning at both linguistic and cultural level. This article examines structural variation in idiomatic expressions in Arabic. A corpus of 440 idioms from the Saudi newspaper Al-Riyadh, which is published in Modern Standard Arabic, was analysed using a version of Moon's (1998) framework of relative fixedness in English idiomatic expressions. This study descriptively categorises the types of variations of idiomatic expressions in this corpus in order to identify the key elements that convey the figurative meaning of these idioms. Analysis revealed, firstly, that structural changes in idiomatic expressions are possible and included, for example, lexical and grammatical variations such as transformation, addition, substitution and embedding. Secondly, the idiomatic expressions were shown to be subject to the rules of Arabic grammar but to have their own specific characteristics related to the correlation between their structural and semantic components. Such characteristics make idiomatic expressions less tolerant of grammatical changes than non-fixed expressions. Thirdly, the findings of the study confirmed the notion that all idioms contain a head word which helps to convey the meaning of the idiom.

The  study  deals  with  the  most  useful  Turkish  emotive  idioms  with  the  meaning  ‘joy’  and  their  main  semantic  groups.  It  is  shown  that  above‑ mentioned idioms are connected with the easiness of movements, the movements  directed  up  or  to  the  sky,  some  somatic  reactions,  dancing  and  playing  a  musical instrument or festive mood, etc. There is also a methodology of working with  Turkish idioms.

В статье рассматриваются наиболее частотные эмотивные ту-рецкие фразеологизмы со значением «радость», приводятся их семантические подгруппы. Выявляется, что указанные фразеологизмы чаще всего связаны с лег-костью движений, действиями, направленными вверх или в небо, некоторыми соматическими реакциями, танцами, игрой на инструменте или праздничным настроением и др. Предлагается методология работы с фразеологизмами. Ключевые слова: турецкий язык, турецкая фразеология, эмотивные фразео-логизмы, радость, турецкие фразеологизмы, обучающие карточки Abstract. The study deals with the most useful Turkish emotive idioms with the meaning 'joy' and their main semantic groups. It is shown that above-mentioned idioms are connected with the easiness of movements, the movements directed up or to the sky, some somatic reactions, dancing and playing a musical instrument or festive mood, etc. There is also a methodology of working with Turkish idioms.

Despite widespread agreement on the significance of Rom 1.16-17,  agreement on its meaning has been elusive. This study focuses on one disputed phrase, ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν, suggesting that it should be read, in the light of Greek idiom, as indicating growth. In the context of Rom 1 the growth Paul is celebrating is not individual faith. Rather, in the gospel — the prophetic announcement of the arrival of eschatological salvation in Christ — the righteousness of God is revealed, resulting in the growing faith of the Gentiles. Paul does not cite Hab 2.4 in Rom 1.17 as a messianic prophecy but as scriptural confirmation that faith is the appropriate response to the gospel.

In response to the bewildering variety of terms and definitions suggested in idiom research, this paper offers specific characteristics and a definition of idiom as a tool for identifying and studying idioms in Biblical Hebrew. The attributes generally suggested as characteristic of idioms are discussed in terms of their suitability or lack thereof, with reference to examples from the Hebrew Bible. Finally, multi-word character, semantic non-compositionality, unit status, conventionalisation, a verbal nucleus, and a content message are identified as necessary conditions for idiomaticity. Based on these, idiom in Biblical Hebrew is defined as “a conventionalised multi-word symbolic unit with a verbal nucleus and a content message, whose global meaning is a semantic extension of the combined meanings of its constituent elements”.

Introduction The theme of my graduation thesis is an examination of idioms in English and in German. The purpose of this research is threefold: to gain theoretical insight in the analysis of the syntactic and semantic properties of idioms, to compare and contrast idioms in both languages and to apply a study to determine in which way the language level for non-native speakers is significant in understanding idioms. I mainly rely on Cacciari (1993), Stone (2016) for the theoretical background on English idioms, on Soehn (2006) and Trotzke (2015) for the analysis of German idioms and on Singstad (2014) as a background for my study. This paper is organized into four chapters that contain a detailed analysis of idioms. The first chapter will deal with idioms in English and will provide a general view of the syntactic properties of idioms such as frozenness and flexibility, as well as of their semantic properties. In the second chapter, we will analyze the behaviour of idioms in German. First, we will examine the syntactic properties of idioms and the variable degree of frozenness or flexibility. Then, we will analyze the semantic properties of idioms. The third chapter will contain a contrastive approach to the idioms in both languages. We will discuss the similarities and differences that may be noticed between idiomatic expressions in English and German. Therefore, we will point to distinguishing syntactic and semantic features of these idioms. Finally, we will focus on the study regarding the idioms examination of Romanian students based on two tests in English and German respectively. The main objective is to investigate how much can language influence their knowledge as far as idiomatic expressions are concerned.

У овом раду се анализирају фразеосемантичка поља живот и смрт у језику руских бајки из лингвокултуролошког и преводилачког аспекта. Као грађа су послужиле фразеолошке јединице и прецедентни феномени ексцерпирани из бајки А.С. Пушкина и њихових српских и украјинских препјева. Све јединице су подијељене у фразеосемантичка поља, а затим разврстане по фразеолошким жанровима и начинима превођења. У раду је дата и лингвокултуролошка анализа појединих јединица које у основи имају митолошке представе и трагове старих словенских и руских ритуала.
Кључне ријечи: фразеосемантичка поља, фразеолошке јединице, прецедентни феномени, руски језик, српски језик, украјински језик, превођење, Пушкин.

A good command of idiomatic or formulaic language is one of the hallmarks of L2 proficiency (e.g., Boers et al. 2006; Bestgen 2017), which is in fact not surprising given the well-documented prevalence of idiomaticity in natural discourse (Erman and Warren 2000). And yet, it is a dimension of L2 development that has remained marginalized in major L2 curricular documents such as CEFR (2001), its Companion Volume (2020), PCIC (2006) and ACTFL (2012), despite increasing recognition of its importance since the early 1990s (Nattinger and DeCarrico 1992; Lewis 1993). Consequently, discussion surrounding its inclusion at all levels of language learning is warranted, including questioning why idiomatic language constitutes a stumbling block for many L2 learners (e.g., Wray 2002, ix). In this chapter, we discuss the challenges that idiomaticity poses to L2 learners of Spanish and we review some of the research on ways in which teaching and learning have been adapted to support learners to meet those challenges. Although most studies focus on EFL or TESOL, it is reasonable to assume that such interventions are transferable to other target languages, including Spanish. Simultaneously, we point to aspects of idiomatic language use that have attracted little attention in the pedagogically-oriented research, such as register and regional variation (Muñoz Basols 2016). While idiomaticity is an umbrella term for a wide variety of formulaic expressions, we focus in the second half of the chapter on a special class known to be particularly challenging for L2 learners, notably figurative expressions. We describe a research-informed approach to teaching figurative language in which learners engage with the literal underpinnings of such expressions. We illustrate this approach with samples of exercises on figurative phrases in Spanish. However, what is striking from our literature review is the virtual absence of classroom activities where idiomatic expressions are integrated naturally into discourse-level communication. Our conclusion offers some suggestions as a means of filling this gap.

This article examines the question of whether (or to what extent) equivalence between idiomatic expressions in different languages is possible. As equivalence is understood here in a broad sense to include all linguistic levels and all types of knowledge about a phraseological unit, it turns out to be very difficult to maintain the claim of interlingual equivalence with regard to idioms. Based on the theoretical framework of Construction Grammar and focusing on linguistic data provided by corpora, I will discuss some types of pseudo-equivalence between Italian and German idioms, also taking into account other languages. The objective of this article is to raise awareness among foreign languages teachers and learners as well as among linguists about the main types of idiosyncrasy that characterize phraseological units.

This paper presents an exploratory study on large-scale detection of idiomatic expressions in essays written by non-native speakers of English. We describe a computational search procedure for automatic detection of idiom-candidate phrases in essay texts. The study used a corpus of essays written during a standardized examination of English language proficiency. Automatically-flagged candidate expressions were manually annotated for idiomaticity. The study found that idioms are widely used in EFL essays. The study also showed that a search algorithm that accommodates the syntactic and lexical flexibility of idioms can increase the recall of idiom instances by 30%, but it also increases the amount of false positives.

In translator training, the process of planning and implementing the teaching process and the design of teaching materials should be dynamic and flexible. With the future purpose to design teaching materials for idiom translation, this study proposes to explore those characteristics of idioms which might cause difficulties when translating them and some of the various classifications of idioms. Some of the relevant factors which might determine the appropriateness and acceptability of idiom translation and some of the translation strategies recommended in the specialized literature will also be presented. We proposed to analyse the idiom-translating solutions and strategies which the literary translator of the novel " A Game of Thrones " chose while translating it into Hungarian. Our aim is to decide whether the novel can be an appropriate source for authentic teaching material. We chose this novel mainly because it has recently become very popular among students, it is rich in idioms, and we believe that different aspects of idiom typology and different strategies used in idiom translation can be exemplified, demonstrated, and practiced with the help of different tasks based on the original text and its Hungarian translation .

Българинът в устойчивите словосъчетания на съседните народи. // Studia Philologica Universitatis Velikotarnovensis. Vol. 36/1. Велико Търново: Университетско издателство "Св. св. Кирил и Методий", 2017, стр. 145 - 158.
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The paper studies idioms containing ethnonyms. Until recently, Bulgarian linguistics studied them predominantly with an emphasis on idioms in the Bulgarian language. It would be interesting to study the topic from the reverse perspective, namely, what idioms exist containing the Bulgarian ethnonym (and its derivatives) as its component in the phraseology and in the paremiology of other nations, specifically our neighbouring nations about whom we ourselves have a great number of idioms.
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В статията се разглеждат фразеологизми, в които се съдържат етноними. Досега в българската езиковедска наука те са били изследвани най-вече с оглед на фразеологизмите, които са засвидетелствани в българския език. Интерес би предизвикало разглеждането на темата от обратната перспектива, а именно какви устойчиви словосъчетания с компонент етнонима българин (и производните му словоформи) съществуват във фразеологията и в пaремиологията на другите народи и по-специално на съседните за нас, за които самите ние имаме толкова много устойчиви словосъчетания.

At present, there is no consensus among sinologists neither on the classification of idiomatic units, nor on the Chinese equivalent for the term ‘idiom’. Despite the more precise and commonly adopted linguistic term ‘common sayings’, guànyòngyǔ 慣用語 are often conventionally translated into English as ‘idioms’. Semantically stable, but structurally flexible, these trisyllabic collocations constitute the second most numerous category of Chinese idiomatic units after chéngyǔ 成語.

The cliché “a picture is worth a thousand words” has been used in connection with everything from directions to the baseball stadium to the anatomy of a flea, but we do not readily think of it in connection with idiom instruction. The teaching of idioms in the EFL classroom is at the same time of great interest to the student, difficult for them to grasp, and problematic to teach for the instructor, as is figurative language in general. The instructor often introduces the idiom by defining it, using it in a few sentences, asking students for questions, and then sending them home with instructions to memorize it for a test. Idiom textbooks often have idioms arranged in lessons or units according to words they contain, e.g., body parts, clothing, colors, plants, sports, weather (e.g., Root & Blanchard, 1999), or even according to the literal meaning of idiomatic expressions (e.g., Collis, 1987). A more methodologically sound approach to teaching figurative expressions such as idioms seems necessary. This study suggests the use of the cognitive linguistic constructs of conceptual metaphor and image schema as part of such an approach. Rather than thinking of metaphor as an extraordinary form of discourse characteristic of literary language, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) have shown that metaphor is a fundamental property of everyday language and a powerful cognitive tool for the conceptualization of abstract categories. Image schemas, as discussed in Lakoff (1987), Lakoff and Turner (1989), and Johnson (1987), are characterized as recurring basic abstract conceptual structures that occur in our conceptualizations of the world and play a fundamental role in cognitive semantic processes. These cognitive linguistic concepts, though formulated for a theoretical explanation of linguistic processes rather that practical ELT application, are being adapted in this study to ascertain their efficacy for the teaching of idioms.

Dwi Asep Mulyono. 2015. Translation Strategies of Pure Idioms in Veronica Roth’s Divergent. English Study Program, Dian Nuswantoro University. Semarang. Advisor: Achmad Basari


Keywords: Translation Strategies, Idiom, Pure idioms, Divergent Novel.

This thesis is entitled Translation Strategies of Pure Idioms in Veronica Roth’s Divergent. The objective of this study is to know the dominant translation strategy applied by the translator in translating pure idioms. This thesis was a qualitative data research. The data were collected through two steps, the first step was to search the data in the bookstore, and the second step was to decide the Divergent novel as the data of this study. In analyzing the data, the researcher read the bilingual novel and found the classified data to be analyzed. There are 38 pure idioms which were then analyzed and classified according to the translation strategies composed by Mona Baker. The result shows that there are 3 translation strategies applied by the translator in order to solve the idiom. The 1st translation strategy is translation using the idiom with similar meaning but dissimilar form, it is applied 8 times (21,05%). The 2nd translation strategy is translation by Paraphrase which is applied 29 times (76,32%). The 3rd translation strategy is translation by omission. This translation strategy was applied on 1 (2,63%) pure idioms translation. In conclusion, it can be said that the dominant translation strategy applied by the translator is the translation by paraphrase.