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| Impossible translations. CC by Jeffrey Breall |
Language is not logical, and does not have to be: it is an art, not a science. An idiom, for example, is an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements.
If we hear that someone has kicked the bucket we know he has died, and we never stop to think about kicking or buckets. We hear the words together, the idiomatic expression, and we react to them with a meaning that has nothing to do with its constituent elements, bucket, kick.
However, this is not the case when we study a foreign language, or when we compare two languages. Different languages have different idioms, which mostly escape us when translating literally.
Let us consider some Spanish and English idiomatic expressions taken literally, to prove our point:
Read the rest of the article at VOXXI.COM
If we hear that someone has kicked the bucket we know he has died, and we never stop to think about kicking or buckets. We hear the words together, the idiomatic expression, and we react to them with a meaning that has nothing to do with its constituent elements, bucket, kick.
Language
is not logical, and does not have to be: it is an art, not a science.
An idiom, for exampleis an expression whose meaning is not predictable
from the usual meanings of its constituent elements.
We are mostly oblivious to the literal meaning of idioms and we do not consider dogs and cats in it’s raining cats and dogs, but rather the fact that it is pouring, raining very hard.However, this is not the case when we study a foreign language, or when we compare two languages. Different languages have different idioms, which mostly escape us when translating literally.
Let us consider some Spanish and English idiomatic expressions taken literally, to prove our point:
Read the rest of the article at VOXXI.COM
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