Definiciones de idiomatismos.

Modismo, modo o construccin particular de cada idioma; son expresiones exclusivas de una lengua generalmente de origen popular, confeccionadas en lenguaje metafrico, y que se refieren a experiencias de orden modal, anmico o prctico. Representan escollos difciles de superar en la traduccin por cuanto son elementos que no se pueden encuadrar dentro de los sistemas. Adems, cabe sealar que su descripcin sistemtica marca la idiosincrasia de un pueblo, ya que la metfora en el idiomatismo se socializa, pasa a integrar el cdigo de comunicacin y, as, a ser patrimonio de todos. En efecto, los idiomatismos configuran el imaginario colectivo de un determinado pueblo.

Segn el Diccionario de la Real Academia Espaola, un idiomatismo es: Giro o expresin propio de una lengua que no se ajusta a las reglas gramaticales. According to the Oxford Dictionary, an idiom is: an expression whose meaning is different from the meanings of the individual words in it. According to the Collins Dictionary, an idiom is: 1. a group of words whose meaning cannot be predicted from the meanings of the constituent words 2. linguistic usage that is grammatical and natural to native speakers of a language 3. the characteristic vocabulary or usage of a specific human group or subject.

According to A Dictionary of American Idioms, an idiom is: the assigning of a new meaning to a group of words which already have their own meaning.

Caractersticas de los idiomatismos.

Constituyen una unidad de forma y sentido. Envuelven una separacin de la norma gramatical, por ejemplo: a pies juntillas. Metaphoricity.

Metaphoricity is one of the most frequently mentioned features of idioms. Nearly all studies treat this characteristic as a fundamental attribute of an idiom. However, there are different degrees of figurativeness. Idioms are usually divided into three categories according to how easily the roots of figurativeness are to be detected. Transparent idioms are expressions where the image the literal meaning creates is clearly linked to the figurative meaning, for example: give the Green light. Semi-transparent idioms are expressions where the literal meaning fives some hint of the figurative meaning but the link is no as obvious as with fully transparent idioms, for instance: quake in your shoes. Opaque idioms, where the motivation behind the figurative meaning is impossible to detect without knowing the etymology, for example: be home and dry. Fixedness of form.

Another basic characteristic of an idiom is frozenness, or invariance in appearance. Just as with metaphoricity, views differ as to the degree of variance attributable to idioms. Glser suggests that instead of frozenness, we ought to speak about semantic and syntactic stability that characterizes idioms. Idioms often tolerate quite a lot of variation either in syntax (tense, negation, position of particles, part of speech), or vocabulary. Although there are idioms that are completely frozen in their form, meaning and context, many idioms can undergo changes in their grammar, vocabulary and context. As language changes, also idiom variations change. Variation is connected with creativeness in the use of idioms. As it is possible to play with the relationship between the figurative and the literal, lexical and syntactical variability add to these possibilities and

increase the flexibility of idioms. It allows alteration in the form and/or vocabulary of an expression to suit the context and situation while yet retaining the characteristics of an idiom. On the other hand, variability also adds to the difficulty in using idioms: not only may various transformations be difficult for a non- native speaker to recognize and comprehend, they may also confuse a native speaker forming or interpreting them. Swinney and Cutler propose that the more frozen the idiom, the stronger its lexical status, that is, the more strongly it is perceived as one word, not as a sentence-like expression containing separate words and meanings. Analyzability/Non-compositionality two sides of the coin.

Non-compositionality has often been interpreted as a sign of idioms being dead, that is, their meanings being arbitrary rather than figurative. The reason has been that the meaning of an idiom is no predictable just from the meanings of the individual words that make it up. This does not mean that the meaning is arbitrary. In fact, as studies on idioms metaphoricity prove, it is often a relationship between the metaphorical and literal meaning does exist. Pulman applies the term analyzable to idioms that can be broken down in such a way that each word can be claimed to correspond to/stand for a part of the metaphorical meaning of the whole. Analyzability or descompositionality is thus connected to figurativeness, and also to variation. Analyzability is connected to metaphoricity, since even though it seems easy to detect, analyzability depends on language users intuitions. Gibbs strongly argues that analyzability is crucial in the understanding and learning of idioms. If a language user and learner can see some motivation behind the form of an expression, it will

naturally be easier to comprehend and probably also to memorize than an arbitrary expression.

Types of idioms.
Lexemic idioms. These idioms correlate with the familiar parts of speech. Some idioms are verbal in nature, such as get away with, work out, turn in, etc. Some are nominal in nature, hot dog (frankfurter in a bun), and White House (official residence of the President of the United States) are nouns. Many are adjectives, as in pepper and salt meaning: black hair mixed with grey. Many are adverbial, as like the breeze (easily without effort), hammer and tongs (violently). Phraseological idioms. The other most important group of idioms is of larger size, for example: to fly off the handle (lose control over oneself), to blow ones stack (to become very angry). Idioms of this sort have been called tournures, meaning turns of phrase, or simply phraseological idioms. What they have in common is that they do not readily correlate with a given grammatical part of speech and require a paraphrase longer than a word. Their form is set and only a limited number of them can be said or written in any other way without destroying the meaning of the idiom. Many of them are completely rigid and cannot show up in any other form. Idioms of this type are regarded as completely frozen forms. Sayings and proverbs. The next largest class of idioms is that of well established sayings and proverbs. These include dont count your chickens before theyre hatched (meaning do not celebrate the outcome of an undertaking prematurely because it is possible that you will fail in which case you

will look ridiculous); dont wash your dirty linen in public (meaning do not complain of your domestic affairs before strangers as it is none of their business). Many of these originated from some well known literary source or come to us from the earliest English speakers of the North American Continent.

Motivacin de las expresiones idiomticas.

Las expresiones idiomticas constituyen una categora de unidades lxicas marcadas culturalmente, y son, por tanto, fuente indiscutible de inequivalencias traductolgicas que plantean problemas a la hora de ser transvasadas a otra lengua. La lengua refleja la cultura de una sociedad, que puede definirse como la totalidad de sus creencias y prcticas. Este hecho se manifiesta particularmente en el nivel semntico. Entre las unidades lxicas marcadas culturalmente, se encuentran las expresiones idiomticas. La motivacin de numerosas expresiones idiomticas proviene de tres fuentes: - La alusin a costumbres, hechos histricos, obras artsticas, leyendas, mitos y creencias. Por ejemplo: to bark up the wrong

tree (la expresin guarda relacin con la prctica de utilizar perros en las caceras de zorros, generalmente los perros corren tras el zorro hasta que este se encarama a un rbol. Los perros ladran hacia arriba en direccin al animal. Si el zorro no se encuentra all, los ladridos son intiles), to be born with a silver spoon in ones mouth (la expresin hace referencia a una vieja costumbre segn la cual en el seno de las familias adineradas los padrinos de un nio le regalaban una cuchara de plata con motivo de su bautismo), to take something with a pinch of salt (la expresin est ligada a la creencia de que aadir sal a los alimentos ayuda a ingerirlos ms fcilmente, en sentido figurado; aceptar fcilmente lo que alguien dice). - La referencia a reas de cultura, aquellas reas de la realidad donde se reflejan las idiosincrasias culturales. Muchas expresiones idiomticas contienen palabras de estos mbitos que han recibido distintas denominaciones: culture-specific concepts, cultural words, cultural elements. Las reas de cultura pueden ser: la gastronoma, el deporte, entre otros. Por ejemplo: en gastronoma: a piece of cake, its not my cup of tea; en deportes (pesca): to swallow/take/accept something hook, line and sinker - Expresiones idiomticas basadas en metforas. Por ejemplo: A company is a ship: to rock the boat, to know the ropes; Organizations are gardens: plough money into something, to branch out; Moods are weather: to give someone a warm welcome, to get cold feet.

Maneras de traducir las expresiones idiomticas.

Al igual que las metforas y las palabras culturales, las expresiones idiomticas son elementos de inequivalencia interlingstica que plantean dificultades a la hora de ser traducidas a otra lengua, especialmente aquellas culturalmente especficas. Hay tres tcnicas para traducir expresiones idiomticas. - Encontrar una equivalencia idiomtica con un significado similar, es decir que mantiene el mismo estilo y el mismo registro de lengua, por ejemplo: en un abrir y cerrar de ojos, in the twinkling of an eye; a piece of cake, pan comido; he's not my cup of tea, no es santo de mi devocin Mantener el exotismo tal cual (con un marcador textual) e intentar una explicacin mediante una nota al pie, por ejemplo en era gauchaso el hombre como bota al potro, que es un exotismo propio de la cultura gauchesca. - Parafrasearlo, es decir, sustituirlo con un trmino de estructura equivalente aunque pierde su expresividad, por ejemplo: to hold one's horses, controlarse; to keep a tight rein, tener algo controlado; to get saddled with something, tener que cargar con algo. A pesar de la existencia de culturas emparentadas, cada cultura tiene sus particularidades, que se plasman en su lengua, dando lugar a inequivalencias translingsticas. Tales equivalencias se derivan de vacos semnticos, que pueden ser de dos tipos: referenciales o lingsticos. Los vacos referenciales representan objetos o conceptos ausentes en la otra lengua (black Friday), mientras los vacos lingsticos representan conceptos no lexicalizados de la misma forma en la otra lengua. Las inequivalencias generadas por los vacos semnticos se resuelven mediante el recurso a la adaptacin y la parfrasis.

A diferencia de la sustitucin, la parfrasis siempre conlleva una prdida del valor figurativo de la expresin que produce una perdida estilstica. La mayora de las expresiones idiomticas metafricas se traducen por parfrasis explicativas, ya que, a pesar del carcter universal de multitud de metforas, cada lengua posee un inventario metafrico determinado por la importancia relativa de ciertos campos lxicos en la comunidad lingstica y cultural en cuestin.

Idioms according to Dagut.

According to Dagut, the idiom presents its own particular translation problems. Although idioms derive from metaphors, idiom is no to be regarded as simply presenting translation-theory with the same problems as metaphor. The idiom is at once easier and more difficult to translate than metaphor, it is easier because it is no longer metaphorical and therefore raises no problem of equivalent metaphoricity; and more difficult because the translator must be fully aware of the distinction between idioms that have a literal counterpart (whose separate designate can be acceptably revived) and those that have not, and must be able to recognize both types in both source language and target language. In order to be able to steer his translation safely past the rocks of idiomaticity, the translator requires a idiomatic competence. Hence the special difficulty of translating idioms. For source language and target language may be expected to differ not only in the figurative components of their idioms, but also in the respective distributions of their literizable and non-literizable idioms. A literalizable idiom is an idiom which can be interpreted literally (according to the basic meanings of its constituents) as well as idiomatically (according to the acquired meaning applicable to the phrase as a whole). Dagut states that the denotational scope of a compound metaphorical expression is greatly enlarged when it loses its literary freshness and exclusiveness and enters into common, everyday usage. What was originally an arresting individual metaphor gradually becomes permanent item of the language-speakers lexical competence, used to designate an ever-growing class of what are taken to be similar experiences. These figurative extensions of meaning once created become subject to what Sapir termed the drift of language (process of steady, systematic

change which is all the time ineluctably at work on linguistic symbols). With use, the original and vivid figurative force of the metaphor becomes progressively dulled, until eventually one of two things happens: either the figurative expression drops out of use altogether and disappears from the language; or it takes its place in the nonfigurative vocabulary of the language as a demetaphorized compound word. According to Dagut there are two large groups of idioms: those which have lost all of their original metaphorical content, and those in which this content is still strongly present. There is a continuous gradation stretching from fully alive metaphor to completely dead (or lexical) idiom, with various intermediate degrees of demetaphorization, or idiomatization. For instance lock, stock and barrel still retains a trace of its figurative force, if only in the greater emphasis that it imparts to the completeness; it represents a type of idiom that occupies a middle position between the large two groups that were mentioned above.