Inlinguistics, acalque (/kælk/) orloan translation is aword orphrase borrowed from anotherlanguage byliteral word-for-word or root-for-roottranslation. When used as averb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language while translating its components, so as to create a new word or phrase (lexeme) in the target language. For instance, the English wordskyscraper has been calqued in dozens of other languages,[1] combining words for "sky" and "scrape" in each language, as for exampleWolkenkratzer in German,arranha-céu in Portuguese,rascacielo in Spanish,grattacielo in Italian,gökdelen in Turkish, andmatenrō (摩天楼) in Japanese.
Calquing is distinct fromphono-semantic matching: while calquing includessemantic translation, it does not consist ofphonetic matching—i.e., of retaining the approximatesound of the borrowed word by matching it with a similar-sounding pre-existing word ormorpheme in the target language.[2]
Proving that a word is a calque sometimes requires more documentation than does an untranslated loanword because, in some cases, a similar phrase might have arisen in both languages independently. This is less likely to be the case when the grammar of the proposed calque is quite different from that of the borrowing language, or when the calque contains less obvious imagery.
Syntactic calques:syntactic functions or constructions of the source language are imitated in the target language, in violation of their meaning. For example, the use of "by" instead of "with" in the phrase "fine by me" is thought to have come from Yiddishbei, namely from the 1930s Yiddish Broadway musical song titleBei Mir Bistu Shein,lit.'To Me You're Beautiful'.[5]
Loan-translations: words are translatedmorpheme by morpheme, or component by component, into another language.
Semantic calques (also known assemantic loans): additional meanings of the source word are transferred to the word with the same primary meaning in the target language. As described below, the "computer mouse" was named in English for its resemblance to the animal; many other languages have extended their own native word for "mouse" to include the computer mouse.
Morphological calques: theinflection of a word is transferred. Some authors call this amorpheme-by-morpheme translation.[6]
Some linguists refer to aphonological calque, in which the pronunciation of a word is imitated in the other language.[7] For example, the English word "radar" becomes the similar-sounding Chinese word雷达 (pinyin:léidá),[7] which literally means "to arrive (as fast) as thunder".
Partial calques, or loan blends, translate some parts of a compound but not others.[8] For example, the name of the Irish digital television serviceSaorview is a partial calque of that of the UK service "Freeview", translating the first half of the word from English to Irish but leaving the second half unchanged. Other examples include "liverwurst" (< GermanLeberwurst)[9] and "apple strudel" (< GermanApfelstrudel).[10]
The "computer mouse" was named in English for its resemblance to theanimal. Many other languages use their word for "mouse" for the "computer mouse", sometimes using adiminutive or, inChinese, adding the word "cursor" (标), makingshǔbiāo "mouse cursor" (simplified Chinese:鼠标;traditional Chinese:鼠標;pinyin:shǔbiāo).[citation needed] Another example is the Spanish wordratón that means both the animal and the computer mouse.[11]
The common English phrase "flea market" is a loan translation of the Frenchmarché aux puces ("market with fleas").[12] At least 22 other languages calque the French expression directly or indirectly through another language.
The wordloanword is a calque of theGerman nounLehnwort. In contrast, the termcalque is a loanword, from the Frenchnouncalque ("tracing, imitation, close copy").[13]
Another example of a common morpheme-by-morpheme loan-translation is of theEnglish word "skyscraper", akenning-like term which may be calqued using the word for "sky" or "cloud" and the word, variously, for "scrape", "scratch", "pierce", "sweep", "kiss", etc. At least 54 languages have their own versions of the English word.
SomeGermanic andSlavic languages derived their words for "translation" from words meaning "carrying across" or "bringing across", calquing from the Latintranslātiō ortrādūcō.[14]
The Latinweekday names came to be associated by ancient Germanic speakers with their own gods following a practice known asinterpretatio germanica: the Latin "Day ofMercury",Mercurii dies (latermercredi in modernFrench), was borrowed intoLate Proto-Germanic as the "Day ofWōđanaz" (Wodanesdag), which becameWōdnesdæg inOld English, then "Wednesday" in Modern English.[15]
Un autre phénomène d'hybridation est la création dans une langue d'un mot nouveau, dérivé ou composé à l'aide d'éléments existant déja dans cette langue, et ne se distinguant en rien par l'aspect extérieur des mots plus anciens, mais qui, en fait, n'est que lecalque d'un mot existant dans la langue maternelle de celui qui s'essaye à un parler nouveau. [...] nous voulons rappeler seulement deux ou trois exemples de cescalques d'expressions, parmi les plus certains et les plus frappants.
Another phenomenon of hybridization is the creation in a language of a new word, derived or composed with the help of elements already existing in that language, and which is not distinguished in any way by the external aspect of the older words, but which, in fact, is only thecopy (calque) of a word existing in the mother tongue of the one who tries out a new language. [...] we want to recall only two or three examples of thesecopies (calques) of expressions, among the most certain and the most striking.
Since at least 1926, the termcalque has been attested in English through a publication by the linguistOtakar Vočadlo [cs]:[17]
[...] such imitative forms are calledcalques (ordécalques) by Frenchphilologists, and this is a frequent method in coining abstract terminology, whether nouns or verbs.
^Gilliot, Claude. "The Authorship of the Qur'ān." InThe Qur'an in its Historical Context, edited byG. S. Reynolds. p. 97.
^abYihua, Zhang, and Guo Qiping. 2010. "An Ideal Specialised Lexicography for Learners in China based on English-Chinese Specialised Dictionaries." Pp. 171–92 inSpecialised Dictionaries for Learners, edited by P. A. F. Olivera. Berlin: de Gruyter.p. 187.ISBN9783110231328
^Durkin, Philip.The Oxford Guide to Etymology. § 5.1.4
^"ratón".Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (DPD), 2.ª edición (versión provisional) (in Spanish). Real Academia Española y Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española. Retrieved30 May 2024.
