Revenire Cuprins

IDIOMS BETWEEN MOTIVATION AND TRANSLATION

Prep. univ. Oana Dugan, Universitatea Dunrea de Jos, Galai
The paper tries to explain how motivation can influence the translation process of idioms
from one language into another. Consequently, it tries to prove that most idioms are products of
our conceptual system and not simply matters of language. An idiom is not just an expression that
has a meaning that is somehow special in relation to the meanings of its constituting parts, but it
arises from our more general knowledge of the world, embodied in our mentality and in our
conceptual system. In other words, idioms are conceptual and not linguistic in nature. From this
point of view, the meaning of idioms can be seen as motivated and not as arbitrary.
This paper also tries to study idioms from a cross-linguistic perspective, analyzing their
functioning in three different languages and the translation problems arising from linguistic as well
as cultural differences.
In a broad sense, an idiom is a long-lived group of words characteristic of a language
(sometimes impossible to translate ad litteram into another language), comprising grammatical
collocations and phrases (fusions, unities and free combinations), most of them being based on
degraded metaphors; in a strict sense, an idiom is tantamount to a phraseological fusion.
According to The Oxford Companion to the English Language (OUP 1992), the term idiom
finds its etymology in Latin idioma and Greek idma meaning at the beginning a specific property,
a special phrasing, from idios = ones own, personal, private. Archaically, there has been another
term, idiotism which has two acceptations. On the one hand it denotes the speech proper to, or
typical of, a people or place; a dialect or local language; the unique quality or genius of a
language. On the other hand it denotes an expression unique to a language, especially one whose
sense is not predictable from the meanings and arrangement of its elements, such as kick the bucket,
a slang term meaning to die, which has nothing to do with kicking or buckets.
Levichi (1976) defines idioms as special forms of speech that are peculiar to the instinct of
a language, they can also be considered, as W. McMordie (1967) does, as peculiar uses of
particular words, and also particular phrases or turns of expressions which, from long usage, have
become stereotyped.
As far as metaphor is concerned, linguists generally agree that it plays an important part in
the formation and existence of idioms. Idioms are essentially connected with metaphors of the
degraded type. Since idioms are connected with degraded metaphors, this happens because
metaphors as many other language matters, may be studied from the point of view of their life and
duration. Accordingly, distinction can be made between live metaphors, degraded (fading)
metaphors and dead metaphors.
Degraded metaphors still convey to the speakers of a language some of their initial
freshness, although they have already become trite. Let us consider, for instance to sift the evidence
(a examina dovezile). In this example, the verb to sift still preserves its semantic connection with
its concrete meaning. It is the long-lived character of the degraded metaphors that links metaphor to
idioms.
Cognitive linguistics has proved that metaphor is a mapping between two cognitive
domains. Mappings or conceptual correspondences usually follow a subconscious pattern of
comparing items from different domains which have some minor but obvious characteristics.
Cognitive linguists see metaphor not as a chunk of language, (sentence, phrase or whatever), but as

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a model of thought defined by a systematic mapping from a source to a target domain (Lakoff
1980, 1987)1 manifested in a chunk of language.
A conceptual metaphor is hence a unidirectional linking of two different concepts, such that
some of the attributes of one (e.g. MONEY) are transferred to the other (e.g. IDEAS). The use of
the term metaphor is restricted to the conceptual frame, so the linguistic realization of a conceptual
metaphor is not called a metaphor, but a metaphoric expression. (Lakoff 1993)2
One of the most important claims of cognitive metaphor theory is that any language contains
connected systems of conventional metaphorical expressions instantiating basic conceptual
metaphors or root analogies, which are shared because they derive from common experience with
the world and serve as part of our conceptual apparatus. (Lakoff and Turner 1989)3
From the point of view of their functioning, conceptual metaphors bring into
correspondence two domains of knowledge. One is called the source domain and the other one is
the target domain. The source domain is typically applied to provide understanding about the target.
Thus different life concepts may be understood metaphorically.
As far as idioms and metaphors are concerned, many idioms are products of our conceptual
system and not simply matters of language (i.e. of the lexicon). An idiom is not just an expression
that has a meaning that is somehow special in relation to the meanings of its constituting parts, but
it arises from our more general knowledge of the world. In other words, idioms are conceptual and
not linguistic in nature. Since metaphors can be described as matters of language but also as being
conceptual, and since idioms are connected with degraded metaphors (conceptual metaphors being
almost so ordinary that we do not recognize their metaphorical character), we may rightly infer
that idioms and metaphors are mutually dependent.
Mention should be made that there are other lexical and semantic processes that affect
idioms. Among these are folk-etymology and metonymy. Folk-etymology sometimes affects
phrases, not only words, e.g. the standardized simile as mad as a hatter. E. Radford notes the
reproach has nothing to do with hatters. They are as sane as anybody else. It was originally as mad
as an atter. Atter was the Anglo-Saxon for viper or adder; and mad was anciently used in the sense
of venomous. Thus the expression mad as an atter meant as venomous as a viper.
Metonymy, too, has an influence on the coming into being of idioms. Classically speaking,
metonymy is a figure of speech by means of which the name of an object is replaced by one of its
significant attributes or by some function that it discharges. In cognitive linguistics, metonymy is
distinguished by metaphor in such a way that metonymy is characterized as typically involving one
conceptual domain, rather than two distinct ones (as is the case of metaphor). Metonymy involves a
stand for conceptual relationship between two entities, while metaphor involves an is or is
understood as relationship between two conceptual domains.
Idioms constitute one of the most difficult areas of foreign language learning and also of
translations. This situation makes it sufficiently worthwhile for us to see what cognitive linguistics
and cognitive semantics can contribute to the translation of idioms. The standard view on idioms
does not deal with the nature of conceptual complexity of idiomaticity. Classically speaking, such
issues as the systematic nature of many idioms, the conceptual mappings that are responsible for
much of the meaning of many idioms, the motivated nature of many idioms and the various kinds of
cognitive mechanisms (like metaphor, metonymy, conventional knowledge) on which many idioms
are based, are not taken into account.
Certain relationships between words are recognized, but these are only certain sense
relations, such as homonymy, synonymy, polysemy and antonymy. Idioms may be seen as standing
1

Lakoff, George, Johnson, Mark, 1980, Metaphors We Live by. Chicago; University of Chicago Press

Lakoff, George. The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. In Metaphor and Thought. Edited by Andrew
Ortony. Cambridge: CUP
3
Lakoff, G. & Turner, Mark, 1989. More than Cool Reason. A Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago and
London: the University of Chicago Press

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in the same relationships. It should be noticed that these are relations of linguistic meanings, not
relations in a conceptual system. In the traditional view, linguistic meaning is divorced from the
human, conceptual system and encyclopedic knowledge that speakers of a language share.
One major stumbling block in understanding and subsequently in translating idioms is that
they are regarded as linguistic expressions that are independent of any conceptual system and that
are isolated from each other at the conceptual level.
Thus, an important generalization can be made: many idioms, better said, most idioms, are
products of our conceptual system and not simply matters of language. An idiom is not just an
expression that has a meaning that is somehow special in relation to the meanings of its constituting
parts, but it arises from our more general knowledge of the world, embodied in our mentality and in
our conceptual system. In other words, idioms are conceptual and not linguistic in nature. From this
point of view, the meaning of idioms can be seen as motivated and not as arbitrary. Knowledge of
the world provides the motivation for the overall idiomatic meaning. This is against the prevailing
dogma, which maintains that idioms are arbitrary pairings of forms (each with a meaning) and a
special overall meaning. When the meaning of an idiom is said to be motivated, it does not
necessarily mean that its meaning is fully predictable. In other words, no claim is made that, given
the non-idiomatic meaning of an idiom, one can predict what the idiomatic meaning will be that is
associated with the words. Motivation is a much weaker notion than prediction. And in some cases,
there is no conceptual motivation for the meaning of idioms at all (see for instance to kick the
bucket).
The motivation for the occurrence of particular words in a large number of idioms can be
thought of as a cognitive mechanism that links domains of knowledge to idiomatic meanings. The
kinds of mechanisms relevant in the case of many idioms are metaphor, metonymy and the
conventional knowledge.
Kvecses and Szabo describe this mechanism in the following diagram:
IDIOMATIC MEANING:
the overall special meaning of an idiom
COGNITIVE MECHANISMS:
metaphor, metonymy, conventional knowledge (=domain(s) of knowledge)
CONCEPTUAL DOMAIN(S):
one or more domains of knowledge
LINGUISTIC FORMS AND THEIR MEANINGS:
the words that comprise an idiom, their syntactic properties, together with
their meanings
Conventional knowledge can often account for a particular idiomatic meaning in a direct
way. Metaphor and metonymy are viewed as cognitive mechanisms that relate a domain of
knowledge to an idiomatic meaning in an indirect way. We would like to suggest that the
implication of these ideas for translating idioms is that this kind of motivation should facilitate the
translatability of idioms.
Let us see how metaphor, metonymy and conventional knowledge motivate the meaning of
idioms and the way they help facilitate the translation process.
For instance, the expression to make ones flesh creep finds equivalents in French in donner
la chair de poule and in Romanian in a i se face pielea gin. It seems that the Romanian
expression is somewhat equivalent to the French one, thus not being very sure if it is a neologism in
Romanian, or the creation of the Romanian speaking community. It is interesting to notice that in all
three languages the expression is related to the aspect of skin. Perfect equivalence is to be found
between English and Romanian in the use of the verbs to make and a face and in the use of the
personal pronoun one and i (the unaccentuated form in Romanian). According to Claude Duneton4,
4

Duneton, Claude1991, La puce loreille, Ed. Balland, Paris

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this idiomatic expression appeared in French in the 14th C and the term chair originally meant
peau (skin). In the 17th C, the expression in French was faire venir la chair de doison. This
means that the comparative term was the geese, the meat of which was very frequently eaten. The
animal was to be found at the market usually without feathers and the resemblance of the
animals skin to the human skin was thus registered for the first time. Later on, in the 18th C the hen
took the place of the geese in the idiomatic expression, and it was firstly mentioned in a dictionary
in 1836 as figure et familier, faire venir la chair de poule = frissonner, tressaillir. So the idiom
was associated with the idea of fear, of something unpleasant happening to a person. It is to be
noted that there is equivalence between the French and the English expression, too, when it comes
to the direct object, (flesh chair). In English, too, according to Pascal Soufflet, flesh originally
denoted the skin. Now, let us see how the idiom functions cognitively, since by discussing the
equivalences in English, French and Romanian, we may infer that the idiom is built on the same
cultural model.
In English, as well as in French, the idiom is associated with the idea of fear. Pascal Soufflet
mentions that to creep= ramper. La sensation quengendre la peur est celle dune substance
trangre qui rampe sur le corps.5 It seems that nowadays the expression is still related to fear in
all three languages, but it also seems that the meaning has restricted in Romanian and in French to
the feeling one has when being cold. Aujourdhui, la chair de poule sert plus banalement
exprimer le frisson atmosphrique du fond de lair qui frachit ou parfois encore le froid dans le
dos de la rpulsion physique.6 Therefore one may infer that for Romanian and French the cognitive
mechanism of this idiom would be based on the mapping metaphor FEAR IS CHILLINESS and on
the metonymy THE SKIN STANDS FOR THE EFFECT / ASPECT. Bearing in mind these
mechanisms, the translator would thus be able to look for equivalents in target languages in
connection with the terms coldness, chilliness, fear and skin. It is interesting to observe that in
English as well, the idiom is based on the metonymy THE SKIN STANDS FOR THE EFFECT even
though the metaphor FEAR IS CHILLINESS does not entirely apply here.
Another idiom to be taken into account is to take French leave. We have decided to select
this idiom, because of the amusing equivalence it finds in French and in Romanian, viz. filer
langlaise and a o terge englezete, and a o terge la papuc. What is interesting at a first glance is
that on the territory of the English language the expression was influenced by the French culture, on
the territory of the French language the locution was influenced by the English culture. The
authentic Romanian locution was influenced by the Oriental habit of discalceation. The Romanian
expression a o terge englezete is undoubtedly a loan translation, which entered the language after
the second half of the 19th C or perhaps even later, in the 20th C. Now let us see what meaning these
equivalent expressions have acquired in all three languages.
Filer langlaise, meaning to leave without asking permission, seems to have a long
account in French due to the mutually influencing cultures and history. Maurice Rat sees the
association of the English culture with the lack of permission as an allusion to the bluntness and
lack of politeness of the British people. Nevertheless, the locution has acquired a much longer
tradition in French. Its origin can be traced back to the 100 years war. Claude Duneton (1991) notes
that : Du XVe au XIXe sicle un anglais designait un crancier, un usurier: Oncques ne vis
anglais de votre taille / Car tout coup vous criez : Baille ! Baille!, dit Clment Marot sans
doute en souvenir des impts et des taux diverses levs, par le parti anglais, au cours de la guerre
5

Creep= 1. to gradually fill or cover a place; 2 to climb up or along a particular place. The idea implied by
Soufflet finds its meaning in the 2nd sense of the term creep. Soufflet links it to the feeling one has when
something climbs up his/her skin.
6
Nowadays, the expression la chair de poule seems to be associated with the feeling one has when the
atmospheric conditions change, the air becoming cooler. This does not, however, exclude, the sensation of
cold one has when being afraid of something. (Translation ours, O.D.)

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de Cent Ans.7 It seems that the locution is also related to the mutual accusations of cowardice
between the British and the French armies, along the centuries. Raspail notes in 1866 that
Wellington, general en chef de larme anglaise, toujours battu en Espagne par nos simples
gnraux, jamais vainqueur () profitait de lombre de la nuit pour sesquiver sans tambour ni
trompettes, ds quil voyait la furie franaise.8 But it seems that the locution filer langlaise was
not so much in use in the 19th C. It appeared published for the first time at the beginning of the 20th
C in the form of some verses: Oh! a fait voir dquoi tes crev;
Chacun se zyeute avec malaise,
Le Monssieur lui stire langalise
Du temps quon tarrcouhsulpav.
(Jean Rictus, Le Coeur populaire, 1900)
Duneton also finds an influence of the verb anglaiser, meaning in the French slang to
steal. Therefore se tirer langlaise could be interpreted as going away as a thief, not
announcing your leaving a certain place, hiding and also trying to conceal your departure.
If in French the idiom is related to a bad perception of the English people and of its
historical influences upon the French culture and life, the same can be said about the perception of
the idiom in English. According to Nigel Reese, to take French leave means to do something
without permission. Originally, to leave a reception without announcing ones departure. One of
many anti-French coinages which exist to snub the French.9
Pascal Soufflet also notes that to take French leave has two meanings: 1. to take something
without asking leave. 2. to leave a party, slipping away surreptitiously. Soufflet also pays
attention to the double meaning of the term leave = 1. permission, autorisation
2. departure, to take leave of somebody = to leave somebody, to go away.10 Therefore, in
both languages the idiom is related to the idea of leaving a place without asking for permission.
Note should be made on the fact that the English connotation of the idiom is also related to leaving
a party.
A o terge englezete is undoubtedly a loan translation from French. The expression has
much the same meaning as the locution from French. But this new form of the expression in
Romanian does suggest that there has once been another expression which contained the verb a o
terge meaning a pleca pe furi (to scuttle away) - to leave without announcing your departure.
Stelian Dumistrcel notes in his Dictionary of Romanian Idiomatic Expressions that the locution
having this meaning in Romanian would be a o terge la papuc meaning 1. to leave a place
without asking for permission, 2. to leave a party before the ending of it established by the
host. There are quite a number of expressions in Romanian related to the connotation of slippers. It
is to be reminded here that the appearance of this clothing object in the language is due to the
oriental habit of discalceation when visiting somebody. According to this habit, the shoes or
slippers of the visitor were left outside, in front of the door, then the visitor had to put them on
when leaving the visited place. Therefore, a o terge la papuc does not only imply the idea of
leaving a place in a hurry and not taking permission but also taking ones slippers when leaving that
place.
Let us see now if there can be a cognitive model for this idiom. Definitely, the idiom
functions, in all three languages, according to the general mapping metaphor LEAVING IS ASKING
7

From the 15th to the 19th C the term anglais (English) denoted a person in debts, and it was used to hint to
the taxes the English had imposed during the 100 years war on the French people. Apud Duneton, Claude,
1991. La Puce Loreille, p.264, Ed. Balland, Paris
8
Wellington, commanding general of the English army, who had always been defeated by the French
generals in Spain, without ever winning any battle, took advantage of the darkness of the night to flee the
French anger apud op. cit. p.264
9
Reese, Nigel 1996. Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, Cassell, London,
10
Soufflet, Pascal, 1997. Expressions et Locutions angalises, Ed. Bordas, Paris.

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PERMISSION. But according to the cultural model and national mentality the metonymy to
influence the coming into being of the idiomatic expressions may be THE ENGLISH STAND FOR
PERMISSION, THE FRENCH STAND FOR PERMISSION, (ENGLEZII/PAPUCII) / THE
ENGLISH / THE SLIPPERS STAND FOR PERMISSION. Thus, any translator trying to find the
right equivalent of this idiom in one of the three languages discussed above, should be well aware
of the mutual cultural implications and interpenetrations of the three languages. If, to a certain
point, the cognitive mechanism may guide the translator to find an equivalent from a source
language to a target language, the folk theory or cultural model plays an important part into the
process of translation. A good translator is therefore the one that knows the connotative functioning
of terms in the target language.
Generally speaking, emotion concepts and concepts denoting personal relationships are
particularly susceptible of metaphorical understanding. Conceptual metaphors usually function as
the connecting element between an abstract domain (such as anger, love, etc) and a more physical
domain (which may be fire, for instance). Conceptual metaphors may thus be seen as conceptually
motivating the use of words such as spark off, fire, go out, burn the candle, fan the flames, etc in the
idioms in which they occur. Conceptual metaphors exist and serve as links between two otherwise
independently existing conceptual domains. In this way, by means of the cognitive system of
association conceptual metaphors allow us to use terms from one domain to talk about another (for
instance leaving / fear / fire to talk about permission / chilliness / anger). The idioms that contain
such terms will be about certain target domains as a result of the existence of conceptual metaphors.
Our ability to see many idioms as motivated arises from the existence of conceptual metaphors.
Thus, the general meaning of many idioms remains completely unmotivated unless we take into
account the interplay between meaning and our conceptual system as largely comprised by
conceptual metaphors. In other words, the meaning of many idioms depends on and is inseparable
from the conceptual system, from the mentality of a people.
The meaning of idioms is not independent from the domains of knowledge that make up a
large part of our conceptual system and conceptual metaphors provide the link between the special
idiomatic meaning and the conceptual knowledge. Therefore, as a conclusion of what we have tried
to demonstrate so far, in many cases what determines the general meaning of an idiom (i.e. what
concept it has to do with), is the target domain of the conceptual metaphor that is applicable to the
idiom at hand and that the more precise meaning of the idiom depends of the particular conceptual
mapping that applies to the idiom. For example, the general meaning of the idioms to make ones
flesh creep / to take French leave / spit fire depends on the existence of the conceptual metaphors
FEAR IS CHILLINESS / LEAVING IS PERMISSION / ANGER IS FIRE. The more precise
meaning of the idiom to spit fire, which is be very angry, depends on the conceptual mapping
intensity of fire is intensity of anger between the source domain fire and the target domain anger.
The more precise meanings of the idioms to make ones flesh creep and to take French leave are to
be frightened and to leave without permission which depend on the conceptual mapping
between the source domain of fear and leaving and the target domains of chilliness and permission.
Nevertheless, metaphor is not the only cognitive mechanism that can motivate idioms. In addition to
conceptual metaphor we also need conventional knowledge as well as conceptual metonymies to
prove that idioms are motivated.
Motivation of idioms rarely comes from a single source i.e. from a single cognitive
mechanism. In most cases motivation comes from a combination of two or more sources. The
particular metonymy that seems to provide motivation for some idiomatic expressions may be
SOMETHING STANDS FOR THE ACTIVITY, in our particular case, THE ENGLISH STAND FOR
PERMISSION, THE FRENCH STAND FOR PERMISSION, (ENGLEZII/PAPUCII) / THE
ENGLISH / THE SLIPPERS STAND FOR PERMISSION or THE SKIN STANDS FOR THE
EFFECT/ASPECT.

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By conventional knowledge as a cognitive mechanism is implied the shared information that

people in a given culture have concerning a conceptual domain. This shared knowledge includes
standard information about parts, shape, size, use and function of a concept, as well as the larger
hierarchy of which it forms a part. This conventional knowledge is called by Lakoff (1987)
idealized cognitive model, by Holland and Quinn (1987) cultural model or folk theory, or by
Fillmore (1982)11 frame or scene.
The American psycholinguist Ray Gibbs has found that conceptual metaphors have
psychological reality and that they motivate idiomatic expressions. The result shows that people
have tacit knowledge of the metaphorical basis for idioms.
By conventional knowledge as a cognitive mechanism is implied the shared information that
people in a given culture have concerning a conceptual domain. This shared knowledge includes
standard information about parts, shape, size, use and function of the human experience, as well as
the larger hierarchy of which it forms a part. This conventional knowledge is called by Lakoff
idealized cognitive model, by Holland and Quinn cultural model or folk theory, or by Fillmore
frame or scene.
Considered as part of the conventional knowledge, cultural knowledge shared
presuppositions about the world plays an enormous role in human understanding, a role that must
be recognized and incorporated into any successful theory of the organization of human knowledge.
Thus cultural knowledge appears to be organized in sequences of prototypical events schemas that
are called cultural models (i.e. the French = cultural model for the English, the English = cultural
model for the French, the slippers = cultural model for the Romanians) and that are themselves
hierarchically related to other cultural knowledge. Cultural models are used to perform a variety of
different cognitive tasks. Sometimes, these cultural models serve to set goals for action, sometimes
to plan the attainment of said goals. Consequently, complexity in the relationship about what people
verbalize and what they do and the execution of other, nonverbal activities is inherent in part
because speakers so frequently undertake complex tasks with many goals that may or may not
include producing a veridical verbal description of what they are about.
Cultural models embed a view of what is and what it means and therefore they grant a
seeming necessity to how we ourselves live our lives. Thus ideas gain force because of what people
accept as the typical and normal way of life. The idioms presented have shown that chilliness and
fear may well be associated with the aspect of goose or hen or creepy skin. The second idiom has
proven that for the English it is the French that are snubbed, for the French, the English are to be
blamed for all evil doings in their culture, whereas in for Romanians, slippers connote for leaving a
place in a hurry and without asking for permission. Thus people find confirmation for their lives in
the beliefs and actions of other people; cultural models that have force for individuals are often the
historically dominant models of the time. This is so, even though some cultural understandings have
certainly undergone historical change and certainly have contemporary competitors in any given
historical moment, as is the case of a o terge la papuc, or faire venir la chair doison.
.
As far as the translation process is involved, we would only like to stick to what translating
cultural specific matters may imply, since we have proved that idioms are part and parcel of cultural
specific behaviour.
Leon Levichi (1976) states everything can be translated but only by implying the greatest
efforts ever. The work of the translator is, therefore, much more difficult than the work of the
writer. The writer must be faithful only to himself and to his language system whereas the translator
must be faithful to the writer, to the source culture and tradition and to the language in which s/he
translates. Ortega Y Gasset12 says languages separate us not only because they are different, but
11

Fillmore, C. 1982. Towards a Descriptive framework for Spatial Deixis. In Speech, Place and Action,
R.J. Jarvella and w. Klein, eds. New York:John Wiley and Sons
12
Ortega Y Gasset 1942. Myseria y esplendor de las traductiones, Madrid, apud Banta A. and E.
Croitoru.1998. Didactica traducerii, Teora.

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because they originate from different mental systems, from different intellectual systems and last
but not least from different philosophies. In his opinion, translation is a utopia, because it
inevitably implies semantic and stylistic losses and sometimes gains.
The translator, also called translator operator explores the culture of the target language
with the overt purpose of finding the equivalent of what s/he has discovered into the language of the
source culture. The translator thus explores the text from the point of view of cultural differences,,
cultural models, common cognitive markers, trying to identify the elements specific to the source
culture but also the elements which may acquire a great importance when the piece of translation is
viewed from the perspective of the target culture.
Considered in general as untranslatable or difficult to translate, the stable word joinings (or
idioms) owe their existence and circulation to translations. Florica Dimitrescu states that idioms
and locutions are untranslatable, and this constitutes a common feature of such language matters.
This untranslatability of idioms may be true if we think only of those considered as specific to a
certain language and culture. Opposing these are those idioms common to several languages which
are part of larger linguistic community.
Idioms can be rendered into another language either by means of a word for word
translation, or by means of a partial transformation implying a free adaptation of the source text
and culture to the target text and culture. The word for word translation is seen as an inferior copy
of the original version, which lacks a vital ingredient which only the original version possesses.
This kind of translation is said to betray the original text. Also called les belles infidelles, the
result of such a translation is a sort of notional equivalence, being accurate but missing the spirit
of the source language. The partial transformation of the source language text implies lack of
accuracy but also a free adaptation, a rewriting of the original text into another language, which
presupposes substituting the original signs with similar signs into the target language. This process
preserves the force of the original version but it alters its form and meaning. Translation thus means
deconstructing the text at one level, constructing it at another level and this process is so complex as
it implies not only knowledge of syntax, semantics, stylistics but also knowledge of general
linguistics, comparative and cognitive linguistics.
The natural language is, however, polysemantic. There are good translations and they are
probably the result of a pre-existing notional equivalence, of the so-called common thinking
patterns. When translating idioms and metaphors, one has to bear in mind that a culture may be
thought of as providing, among other things, a pool of available metaphors for making sense of
reality. The translator is thus faced with the difficult problem of rendering into a target language
someone elses experiences when s/he does not live by the same conceptual metaphors and does not
have in the target language the equivalent expressions of the communicative situation from the
source language. In this situation, exploring the cognitive mechanisms, which motivate idioms in a
source language, may significantly help the translator find the closest equivalents in a target
language by applying the same method.
When talking about the translation of idioms, Daguts (1976) classification of metaphors13
points to the passage of metaphor from performance to competence, from individual innovating
creation to routine collective repetition. He says that this process can also result in the creation of
simplex metaphors, i.e. polysemes or complex metaphors, i.e. idioms.
13

Dagut (1976), distinguishes three main classes of metaphors in terms of their subsequent history. The first
include the great majority of metaphors that prove to be ephemeral and disappear without a trace. Cases in
point are the forgotten metaphors of literature, journalism and extempore oral invention. The second class is
made up of a very large group of metaphors which remain unique semantic creations. Dagut exemplifies this
class by embalmed metaphors of literature such as times winged chariot and assumes that their endurance is
due to their apartness from routine. The third group contains metaphors that are taken up and used by an
increasing number of other speakers, so that they gradually lose their uniqueness and peculiarity, becoming
part of the established semantic stock of the language and being recorded as such in the dictionary.

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Peter Newmark proposes another classification of metaphors that may help translate them
into a target language and also proposes several possibilities of translating metaphor. Some of these
principles may be retained as modalities of rendering idioms from one language and culture into
another language and culture. The types of metaphor proposed by Newmark (1985, 1988) are dead,
clich, stock, recent, and original.
Idioms can best enter the category of stock metaphors or standard metaphors, which are
defined as established metaphors which in an informal context are an efficient and concise method
of covering a physical and/or mental situation both referentially and pragmatically. (Newmark,
1988)14 Just like idioms, stock metaphors may have cultural, universal and subjective aspects and a
certain emotional warmth which is not deadened by overuse. Newmark proposes several procedures
for their translation, among which best suiting the category of idioms are:
1. reproducing the same image in the TL, provided it has comparable frequency and currency in
the appropriate TL register: e.g. his life hangs on a thread sa vie ne tient qu un fil; a o
terge englezete / filer langlaise; a I se face pielea gin / faire venir la chair de poule.
Newmark says that this procedure is common especially for one-word metaphors when there
is culture overlap and universal experience.
2. replacing the SL image/vehicle with another established TL image if one exists that is
equally frequent within the register: e.g. other fish to fry dautres chats fouetter; to take
French leave a o terge la papuc, to make ones flesh creep donner la chair de poule a i
se face pielea gin.
Among the other metaphor translation procedures, another method is worth taking into
account as far as idiomatic expressions are concerned. It is the reducing of the SL metaphor to sense
or literal language: e.g. gagner son pain earn ones living a-i ctiga pinea. In principle, the
use of this method involves a componential analysis of the sense. Thus, the translator has to pick up
those components that fit in the context. In other words, the degree and depth of detail entered into
the componential analysis of a stock metaphor depends on the importance the translator gives it in
the context. One of the solutions that will do in the case is a synonym: Notre but nest pas de faire
de la Pologne un foyer de conflits It isnt our purpose to make Poland into a center (source,
focus) of conflict.
Another translation procedure that may be used for translating idioms may be the preserving
of the same metaphor/idiom combined with sense. This procedure is used when the translator
retains the SL image and may wish to ensure that it will be understood be adding a gloss, usually in
the form of a footnote. This may happen when the translator lacks confidence in the
metaphors/idioms evocative power and clarity or when the metaphor/idiom is culture-specific and
it has an important role in the ST.
In case an original cultural metaphor/idiom seems to be a little more obscure and not very
important, the translator can sometimes replace it with a descriptive metaphor or reduce it to sense.
Nevertheless, care should be taken not to automatically couple the obliteration of a ST
metaphor/idiom in one place with the introduction into the TT of another metaphor/idiom elsewhere
in such a way as to regard the two as constituting evidence of compensation.
Most authors agree that the image in the SL cannot always be retained in the TL (e.g.
because the image that is attached to the metaphor/idiom is unknown in the TL, or the associations
triggered by the SL metaphor/idiom get lost in the TL), and subsequently several translation
procedures have been suggested as alternative solutions to the ideal of reproducing the
metaphor/idiom intact. This happens often in a prescriptive sense (i.e. how to translate
idioms/metaphors). Three main procedures or strategies can be found in literature:
metaphor/idiom into same metaphor/idiom direct translation (a case of perfect
equivalence);
14

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metaphor/idiom into different metaphor/idiom substitution of the image in the SL text by a

TL metaphor with the same or similar sense and /or same or similar associations;
metaphor/idiom into sense paraphrase, shift to a non-figurative equivalent.
Johnson & Lakoff (1982) suggest that for an accurate or good translation of conceptual
metaphors, folk theories of everyday experience should also be taken into account. By folk theory is
meant a model of some aspect of reality that is most often taken as constituting common sense and
this is the case applied for the idioms taken as examples.
Attempting to translate idioms and proverbs has fully proved that where the speaker and the
hearer do not immediately share the same sense of reality, the hearer will have to imaginatively
restructure his own sense of reality according to the clues provided by the speaker. Metaphorical
concepts and folk theories are important guides to this reorganizing activity. It is often possible to
get at least a partial grasp of someone elses understanding even where you do not base your actions
on his/her metaphors. This is possible because you have access to those metaphors through your
cultures pool of conventional metaphors and folk theories assuming that you are both members
of the same culture.
To sum up, this paper, by investigating what Bally called spontaneous language and defined
it as the spring of esthetical resources, (in other words the current every-day language, and not the
literary one), has definitely proved that participants in a communicative situation are who and what
they are as part of their physical circumstances, their environment, their culture and their heritage.
Therefore, for a translator to grasp anothers sense of the reality of things, s/he must find bases in
his/her own physical, personal and cultural reality onto which s/he can project the others reality in
a meaningful way.
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