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Careless calque costs lives
Mar. 15th, 2007 09:09 amMy word of the day -- calque. A term in linguistics, meaning the word-for-word translation of a figure of speech, or othe compound, from another language. Some examples in English (all from Chinese): brainwashing, long time no see, look-see, lose face, paper tiger. An example in French from English: gratte-ciel = skyscraper.
Not the most interesting / satisfying of concepts, as it just shifts any "why do we use that strange phrase?" question to "OK, so why do the Italians (or whoever) use that strange phrase?" So English "flea market" from French "marché des puces" carries the same level of meaning in either language. I suppose the best calques would be those which seem quite bizarre in the borrowing language, yet make perfect sense in the context of the host culture. Eg. if a "paper tiger" were a thing which actually existed in China but was unknown in the UK, rather than just being a metaphor there like it is here -- or if the French did actually have markets for fleas, which somehow had become misunderstood as second-hand markets when they crossed the Channel. Can you think of any such?
Not the most interesting / satisfying of concepts, as it just shifts any "why do we use that strange phrase?" question to "OK, so why do the Italians (or whoever) use that strange phrase?" So English "flea market" from French "marché des puces" carries the same level of meaning in either language. I suppose the best calques would be those which seem quite bizarre in the borrowing language, yet make perfect sense in the context of the host culture. Eg. if a "paper tiger" were a thing which actually existed in China but was unknown in the UK, rather than just being a metaphor there like it is here -- or if the French did actually have markets for fleas, which somehow had become misunderstood as second-hand markets when they crossed the Channel. Can you think of any such?
