Abstract
This paper focuses on the classic problem of how to deal with the translation of Phraseological Units (PU) linked to emotion, and contemplates a threefold path: their omission –when the translator/interpreter does not feel capable of rendering them into another language–; the relentless search for a functional equivalence that perfectly fulfills the role of PUs in the target language (TL); and, finally, the semantic-pragmatic neutralization of phraseologism as a less compromising and more practical option.
For this purpose, we will first devote a few lines to reviewing some references that could be considered classical and current works in the area of a transversal nature and specifically focused on emotional concepts such as fear. Later, we will analyze metaphorization and metonymy from the point of view of Cognitive Grammar and the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), as a strategy for the translation of emotions in PU, as well as the false universality of phraseological representations related to emotions. This will provide us with the theoretical support to conduct a case study, which will be presented in Sect. 5. Finally, we will draw some conclusions from the findings of our research.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Each language creates its own emotional universe’.
- 2.
H. Burger, S. Geck, L. Luque, B. Ahrens, L. Amigot, U. Becker, A. Torrent, L. Uría, J. Beßler, P. Eberwein, M. Marín, A. Grutschus, C. Grümpel, N. Iglesias, C. Mellado Blanco, M. Recio, R. Sánchez, R. Schröpf, or M. Soliño.
- 3.
‘It is through this principle that speakers understand how metaphoric projections are formed’.
- 4.
Recio (2012).
- 5.
‘The human thought uses universal cognitive mechanisms when expressing some emotions verbally and figuratively’.
- 6.
‘There is no clear border between linguistic knowledge and knowledge of the world’.
- 7.
‘A good education induces changes in the brain that help to improve the learning process’.
- 8.
‘One particular feature of the phraseological meaning when compared with the meaning of free lexemes is that there is in the former a predominantly connotative component, rather than a denotative one’.
- 9.
In English ‘to be scared shitless’.
- 10.
‘Someone’s knees are knocking’.
- 11.
In English ‘someone’s blood froze [in their veins]’.
- 12.
‘Someone would willingly jump into the fire’.
- 13.
In Spanish, there is a large number of animals’ names in masculine and feminine that, apart from sexist interpretations, appear in phraseological units of many languages and represent not only different but opposite values: gallo/gallina, toro/vaca, perro/perra, lagarto/lagarta, gato/gata, caballo/jaca, liebre/conejo, etc.
- 14.
‘The notion of a correspondence between concepts from different domains’.
- 15.
‘It is often the culture itself which helps us to understand the metaphorical meaning of an expression. For example, in the metaphor “él es un gallina” [he is a hen], we immediately associate the hen with cowardice, rather than with a lack of strength. Therefore, many metaphorical projections or concepts are purely cultural and are the result of tradition, education and folklore’.
- 16.
‘(…) the context and cotext play an essential role in the search for equivalence in translation’.
- 17.
‘(…) on the basis of conventional implicatures and connotations (…)’.
- 18.
‘a dynamic theory based on the translation unit’.
- 19.
‘the analogy proposed by the translators when they establish the inputs that make up the references from different cultures (…) depends, in turn, on the sensory perception of the translator’.
- 20.
Dated ca. 1585. Henry Bonneville, Poesías humanas, Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1987.
- 21.
‘[SOLDIER 2] I shall walk diligently / through that field for ten and twenty… / twenty? What am I saying! for a thousand leagues!
[WOMAN] Damn these truces! / Any man who consents to them / must be a hen’. In: Nacimiento de Ursón y Valentín, reyes de Francia: http://buscador.clemit.es/ficheros/El%20nacimiento%20de%20Urs%C3%B3n%20y%20Valent%C3%ADn.pdf.
- 22.
‘HEN: Used as an analogy to refer to somebody who is a coward, fainthearted or shy. The term alludes to the cowardice of this bird. Latin. Timidus. Iners. INC. GARCIL. Part. 1. Book 9. Chap. 23. Indians have the same saying as Spaniards, in which they call a man a hen when they want to call him a coward. […]’
- 23.
‘[…] The proverb in which a man is referred to as a hen when he is accused of being a coward is something that Indians have adopted from Spaniards due to the familiarity and the conversations they have, and also in an attempt to mimic their language. […]’
- 24.
‘The problem here is the superficial nature of the expression, that is, when the apprentice or the translator does not go beyond the surface of the expression and does not take into account its evolution and the fact that this transformation has very likely been divergent. Most of the times this development is due to the fact that they belong to utterly idiomatic phraseologisms whose origins are part of each language in itself, as well as of their history, their evolution and their culture.’
- 25.
DLP: 1. Que ou o que gosta de namoriscar ou namorisca várias mulheres; que ou o que anda sempre metido com mulheres./ Someone who likes to flirt with several women; someone who is always surrounded by women.
- 26.
Wordreference: s.v. mulherengo. / A womanizer.
- 27.
In the Dictionnaire français contenant les mots et les choses, by Pierre Richelet.
- 28.
In the 17th century, the Diccionario de Autoridades (1726–1739) includes the term lebrón, which Covarrubias defines as follows:
LEBRÓN. It is used metaphorically to refer to someone who is shy and cowardly, and it alludes to the timidity and suspicion of hares. Latín. Timidissimus. […] (IV Volume, 1743).
- 29.
It would also be valid, according to the contexts, sich ins Hemd machen, which would lead us to the Spanish analogous no llegarle a uno la camisa al cuerpo, for example.
- 30.
For ser un perro viejo, German uses ser una liebre vieja [to be an old hare] (ein alter Hase sein), in which wisdom based on experience is praised, while apparently the same animal is the protagonist of the PU Mein Name ist Hase, which we could freely translate as A mí que me registren / Yo no tengo ni idea / Yo no sé nada or Yo pasaba por aquí [You can search me / I don’t know what is going on here / I don’t know anything / I was just passing by]. Although the origin actually goes back to a student of Heidelberg, Karl Victor von Hase, involved in a duel in 1854 and stripped of his identity card so as not to be arrested.
- 31.
‘aversion, anxiety or anxiety horror, restlessness, oppression or coercion’, respectively.
- 32.
Or to regionalism die Bangbüxe (from Bang, ‘coward’ and Büxe, a less frequent variant of Buxe, ‘pants’), very similar to the Dutch bangebroek.
- 33.
Toury (1995: 82).
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Torijano, J.A., Recio, M.Á. (2019). Translating Emotional Phraseology: A Case Study. In: Corpas Pastor, G., Mitkov, R. (eds) Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology. EUROPHRAS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11755. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30135-4_28
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