Idioms In English And Other Languages

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Idiomatic expressions According to Collins English Dictionary an idiom is “a group of words whose meaning cannot be predicted from the meanings of the constituent words”. What separates idioms from sayings is that they are generally shorter and their meaning is less tangible (Stålhammar 1997:45). Idioms are also metaphorical expressions (Moon 1998:5). According to Ingo an idiom should, as far as it is possible, be translated by using another idiom. This is however not always possible, which Ingo also acknowledges. According to him there are mainly four ways of handling idioms: I. By translating an idiom with an equivalent idiom II. Word for word III. With an explanatory everyday expression (normaluttryck) IV. An everyday expression (normaluttryck) is translated by using an idiom (Ingo 1991:209 – 210) (These will be referred to in the text as (I), (II), (III), and (IV)) Since this is a text from a course book and not a poetic text or from a work of fiction there were not many idioms and expression, which maybe was not that surprising. On the other hand, according to Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Idioms idioms are found more often in texts that are not informal than one would normally expect (Sinclair 1995:VI). The very first sentence start with the idiom: (40) On the face of it (599 ST) Vid första anblicken (1 TT) 28 The literal translation would be something like på dess ansikte which would have been very awkward and incomprehensible in the context. As a unit the words mean something like at first sight or what the surface reveals and when one is familiar with this idiom a correlating translation can be made. In this case the third method (III) was used, an idiom was translated with an explanatory everyday expression. The next expression means to lay out the foundation or to explain the starting point for something. A Swedish equivalent

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