What is the meaning of calque in translation?

Table of Contents

In linguistics, a calque (/kælk/) or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation.

What is the difference between borrowing and calque?

And many other languages borrow loanwords from English. The key difference between a calque and a loanword, is that a loanword isn’t translated into English (pizza in Italian is pizza), whereas a calque is. Sometimes it’s a whole phrase or compound noun wherein each component word is literally translated.

What are borrowings in translation?

Borrowing Borrowing is a translation technique that involves using in the target text the same word or expression found in the original text. The word or expression borrowed is usually written in italics. This is about reproducing an expression in the original text as is.

What is the tool of translation calque?

A calque is a word-for-word translation from one language to another. When you take a phrase in French, for example, and translate each word literally into English, that’s a calque.

What is adaptation in translation?

Adaptation may be understood as a set of translative interventions which result in a text that is not generally accepted as a translation but is nevertheless recognized as representing a source text. As such, the term may embrace numerous other notions such as appropriation, domestication, imitation and rewriting.

What is the difference between calque and literal translation?

A calque (otherwise known as a loan translation): is a word or phrase taken from one language and translated literally, word-for-word, into another language. Whereas a loanword: is a foreign word or expression maintained in its original form in the target language.

What is adaptation in translation with examples?

Adaptation: expressing something specific to the source language culture in a totally different way that is more familiar in or appropriate to the target language culture (a good example would be paraphrasing expressions in English deriving from cricket, such as ‘being on a sticky wicket’, ‘having had a good innings’ …

What are the techniques in translation?

What are the main techniques of translation?

Borrowing. Borrowing is where words or expressions are taken directly from the source text and carried over into the target language.
Calque (loan translation)
Literal Translation.
Transposition.
Modulation.
Equivalence/Reformulation.
Adaptation.
Compensation.

Is calque a calque?

For example, when you take a phrase in French and then literally translate root-for-root or word-for-word into English, that’s a calque. In English we see many examples of common phrases that are calques translated from other languages.

Why do we use calque?

The term calque is borrowed from French and it derives from the verb calquer which means to copy, to trace. More specifically, we use the verb to calque when speaking about borrowing a word or phrase from another language while translating its components so as to create a new lexeme in the target language.

What is calque in linguistics?

In linguistics, a calque (or loan translation) can be defined as a word-for-word translation from one language into another. For example, when you take a phrase in French and then literally translate root-for-root or word-for-word into English, that’s a calque.

What is the difference between Calque and literal translation?