The Translation of Idiomatic Expressions Metaphorical Low-Deductible: contributions to phraseological bilingual studies

Abstract

This research aims to analyze Italian Idiomatic Expressions that have cultural elements in its constitution whose metaphos are low-deductible. For Idioms of low-deductible metaphorical we understand those combinations that present, in its constitution, historical, geographical, religious, mythological or even simply linguistic elements that are typical or significant only in the source language (Italian, here). This means that its semantic stuff does not help or provide clues to the translation in the target language (Portuguese, in our research). We will focus our research on Idiomatic Expressions. Before proposing translations for these phraseologisms, we will analyze their metaphors, and will select the context of use in which they appear. The research will reflect on various subjects such as: phraseologisms, idioms, metaphor and metonymy, translation modalities, notion of equivalence, corpus, among others. The corpus of this research will be selected in special dictionaries of Idiomatic Expressions and monolingual dictionaries in Italian language. The selection of Phraseologisms will be based on the frequency they appear in the reference materials. To check their occurrence frequencies, we use the web as corpus, since in traditional corpora, there is usually not enough to attest to the current use of Phraseologisms. In a second step, we intend to develop a practical part which includes the selection and typological classification of the low-deductible metaphorical phraseologisms, the analysis of their metaphors; the proposed translational correspondences; and the development of a small lexicographical material. For discussions concerning the phraseological studies, in this work, we will rely on authors like Tagnin (1989 ), Xatara (1995 ), Corpas Pastor (1996 ), Ortíz Alvarez (1997 ), to name a few. Based on the considerations made above , we realize how complex is the process of idiomatic Phraseologisms translation from one language to another, as it involves the understanding of its metaphors, as well as the culture of its people, and not simply an analysis of its linguistic structure. To support our reasoning about the metaphors we use Lakoff and Johnson (2002)'s and Kovecses' theories.