DEFINING FEATURES OF IDIOMS: ‘STUMBLING BLOCKS’ IN THE PROCESS OF TRANSLATION
DEFINING FEATURES OF IDIOMS: ‘STUMBLING BLOCKS’ IN THE PROCESS OF TRANSLATION

Summary/Abstract: Defining Features of Idioms: ‘Stumbling Blocks’ in the Process of Translation. Idioms enclose the most peculiar characteristics of a language, displaying a high degree of cultural and linguistic specificity and reflecting the idiosyncrasies of a particular language. They usually pose serious problems to non-native, and sometimes even to native speakers of a language, due to the fact that they behave in a puzzling way. The present paper discusses four main features of idioms, namely semantic non-compositionality, lexical integrity, institutionalisation and compositeness. These features add up to the complexity of the idiomatic construction and at the same time create specific difficulties in the process of translation. The paper focuses on the analysis of each individual feature and the delineation of the particular problems that they cause in the translation of idioms, with relevant illustrations from the Romanian version of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.

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