ANIMALS WITHOUT BORDERS: IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS WHICH (DO NOT) TRAVEL
ANIMALS WITHOUT BORDERS: IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS WHICH (DO NOT) TRAVEL

Summary/Abstract: This paper investigates some idiomatic expressions related to the animal world,discussing their possible correspondences in three languages: English, Italian and Romanian.Similarities can be based on common biblical, literary and/or mythological origins, as well as on similar forms of life (e.g. peasant life). There may be variations on the topic, or expressions which are very distant from each other, in such a way that a translator is required to make a considerable effort of creativity to restore the original image.Starting from a series of animal idioms in the three languages mentioned above, we try to detect in which cases idioms have maintained equivalent zoomorphic images (the same animal or a similar one in terms of taxonomy or behaviour) or have used other images related to the natural world, or even in which cases idioms have moved away from this world, thus showing a possible detachment from the peasant culture which generated some of these expressions. The paper ends with a brief exploration of the phraseological bestiary in some non-Indo-European languages. This is to verify whether the Indo-European languages under discussion and in particular two neo-Latin languages, namely Italian and Romanian, show greater affinities in animal idioms than those possible with other linguistic families

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