Careless calque costs lives

[undyingking]

My 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?

Comments

[gbsteve.livejournal.com]

Franglais is a triumph of calque but that's not quite what you're after, even if "foutez cela pour une alouette" has a certain ring about it.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Il a un certain anneau autour de lui, yes indeed.

[gbsteve.livejournal.com]

French borrows English words and uses them in slightly strange ways. So the word pronounced "shom-pwan" is actually spelt shampooing meaning shampoo and they do the same with "le shopping" too not realising that it's not a noun in English.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, I've often wondered why they've seized upon that particular part of speech ("le parking" is another one) when you'd think eg parkage, shoppage etc might be a more natural formation.

[example22.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to think of some (hampered by my utter lack of language skills), and I keep coming up with US-to-UK borrowings that make sense in the US but not here (but that get used here anyway because US English is hipper, or something). Can you have a calque from English to English? There must be a whole list from baseball alone, but the only thing I can think of is "taking a raincheck"...

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, I suspect there's another name for that...

[thecesspit.livejournal.com]

And from cricket back the other way, I'd guess.

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

There are some totally incomprehensible idiomatic phrases in Japanese, because they depend either on a hononym or on a pun on the Kanjii, but they will get translated literally - "Cat's forehead" (neko no hitai) being a classic of the genre, meaning narrow or small, a cat being no wider than its forehead, but there's also a pun in there, which is why the particular comparison was selected in the first place.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I like that! Now all we need to do is popularize "cat's forehead" in English, and we're there.

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

For years, an aunt of mine thought one of her bosses was insane when he used to suck in his breath, and say "Ah, yes, Cat's forehead" sagely in reply when talking about things....

A similar expression is "Neko no Koban", "Cat's gold coins" - but this one is exactly analagous to "Pearls before Swine"

[cancionista.livejournal.com]

Calquelus...

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Aha, maybe! Although I suspect "calculus" came into English directly from Latin, so it might be more of a "forgotten etymology" than a true loanword.

I did think though of "catkin". In English, this is the name for the flower of hazel etc trees. In French such a flower is called "chaton", which is the same as the French word for "kitten", a young cat. Of course in archaic English "catkin" would also have meant a young cat, but that meaning has been entirely lost. So if we called hazel flowers "catkin" as a translation of the French "chaton" without realizing that they were called this because they were small and furry and resembled kittens, that would be a good example. (But a complicated one to explain ;-)

[cancionista.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know - that's just my sense of humor. :)

Of course, when you say 'catkin', I think 'puma, tiger, panther' etc. :)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

That's interesting -- I would call them "catkind".

(I think UK use of "-kin" in that sense survives only in Scotland.)

[cancionista.livejournal.com]

Yes, you can say '-kin' to imply relation, but you have to say 'Ahrgh' in front of it, or it's syntactically not worth mentioning.