The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
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24 The Linguist Vol/64 No/2 ciol.org.uk/thelinguist FEATURES Why phrases tell us as much about our shared human experiences as they do about our differences. By Antonio Muñoz Barragán P hraseology, which includes idioms, proverbs and other types of set phrases, is known to pose a challenge to translators due to the specific properties these structures convey. But despite huge differences among diverse languages, phraseological units also reveal a lot about what disparate cultures have in common. Symbols and anthropological perceptions have shaped human thought in very different languages. There seems to be a common source of knowledge that pervades traditional and folk wisdom, which arises in phraseology. Studying idioms, proverbs and phrases reveals a corresponding reference to life events in different languages, showing that beyond our diversity we have similar experiences. If we want to find idioms or proverbs that carry the same meaning around the world, we should start by looking for something that is close to human experience everywhere. It is logical that the more culturally relevant a word or expression, the more difficult it is to find an equivalent word or phrase in another language. To illustrate this idea, let's take the example of birds, which are known the world over and have always been seen as a symbol of freedom and, sometimes, of transience. They fly and get away from us easily, appearing in figurative expressions as metaphors for freedom. The phrase 'free as a bird' has the equivalent libre como un pájaro in Spanish, libre comme un oiseau in French, ح ر ك ا ل ع ص ف و ر (hur k'aleusfur) in Arabic and frei wie ein Vogel in German. All use the same vehicle to express identical sense thanks to the universal perception of birds as free beings. In contrast, Chinese has a saying that makes use of a longer and more poetic metaphor: 天高任鸟飞 (tiāngāorènniǎofēi). As often happens, this is just the second part of a binary structure whose full expression is 海阔凭鱼跃, 天高任鸟飞 (hǎikuòpíngyúyuè, tiāngāorènniǎofēi; 'the oceans are boundless and let fish jump, the sky is vast and lets birds fly'). This adage also implies the value of opportunity and is a good example of how context has to be considered for a proper translation. Another seemingly universal concept is that some opportunities don't arise often and have to be grabbed as soon as they show up. The idea of seizing the right moment is expressed in 'a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush', with the equivalent más vale pájaro en mano que ciento volando ('a bird in the hand is better than a thousand flying') in Spanish, un tiens vaut mieux que deux tu l'auras (lit. 'one "you have" is worth more than two "you will have"') in French and meglio un fringuello in mano che un tordo in frasca ('better a finch in the hand than a thrush on the branch') in Italian, with the variant meglio un uovo oggi che una gallina domani ('better an egg today than a hen tomorrow'). We can date this back to Latin: sola avis in cavea, melior quam mille volantes ('a bird in a cage is better than a thousand flying'). One heart? A very important concept in all cultures is the heart. An organ that pumps blood and is linked to our emotions, it has inspired philosophic and poetic ideas that are embedded in phraseology. In ancient cultures, the heart was not only the vehicle of emotions but also the sea of the spirit and moral personality, and thus of intelligence. That is why we say 'listen to your heart', écoute ton coeur (Fr) and escucha tu corazón (Sp) with exactly the same form and meaning. To convey the idea of memorisation, we learn 'by heart' instead of with our brain. French has a similar expression, apprendre par coeur, while in Arabic we have ح ف ظ ه ع ن ظ ه ر ا ل ق ل ب (hifizah ean zahr alqalb), which can be translated as 'memorising by heart'. The equivalent in Spanish is (aprender) de coro, which is a phraseological fossil, since it contains a lexical unit (coro) that is found only in that idiom, which is very rarely used. It has the same root as the word for heart: corazón. The Spanish verb recordar ('remember') also has the etymological sense of 'going back to our heart', in search of our memories. Something similar happens with the Portuguese de cor and the verb decorar, which means 'decorate' but also 'remember'. You may be thinking that most of the languages above are related, and that is why we find similar meanings, but if we look at a very different language, we see similar references to the heart associated with intellectual activities. In Chinese, the character An idiom for all