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In linguistics, a calque ( /ˈkælk/) or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word (Latin: "verbum pro verbo") or root-for-root translation.

Calque[link]

Used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language while translating its components so as to create a new lexeme in the target language.

"Calque" itself is a loanword from a French noun, and derives from the verb "calquer" (to trace, to copy),^[1] while loanword is a calque of the German "Lehnwort", and loan translation — a loan translation of "Lehnübersetzung".^[2]

Proving that a word is a calque sometimes requires more documentation than does an untranslated loanword, since 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 language proposed to be borrowing, or the calque contains less obvious imagery.

Calquing is distinct from phono-semantic matching.^[3] While calquing includes (semantic) translation, it does not consist of phonetic matching (i.e. retaining the approximate sound of the borrowed word through matching it with a similar-sounding pre-existent word or morpheme in the target language).

Examples[link]

The common English phrase "flea market" is a phrase calque that literally translates the French "marché aux puces" ("market of fleas").^[4]

Another example is "bienvenue" ("welcome"), in Canadian French sometimes used for "You're welcome" in response to "Thank you", instead of the standard-French "Je vous en prie" ("I beg you to") or "avec plaisir" ("with pleasure"). These phrases are also found as calques in English, as "It was my pleasure" and "The pleasure was [or "is"] mine."

"Skyscraper"[link]

Going in the opposite direction, English-to-French, provides an example of how a compound word may be calqued by first breaking it down into its component roots. The French "gratte-ciel" is a word-coinage inspired by the English "skyscraper" — "gratter" means "to scrape", and "ciel" means "sky". Many languages have constructed their own calques:

"Translation"[link]

The word "translation", etymologically, means a "carrying across" or "bringing across": the Latin "translatio" derives from "transferre" ("trans", "across" + "ferre", "to carry" or "to bring").^[5]

Some European languages have calqued their words for the concept of "translation" on the kindred Latin "traducere" ("to lead across" or "to bring across", from "trans", "across" + "ducere", "to lead" or "to bring").^[5]

European languages of the Romance, Germanic and Slavic branches have calqued their terms for the concept of translation on these Latin models.^[5]

Notes for "Translation"

Multiple causation[link]

According to linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, the larger the number of contributing languages that have a structurally identical expression, the more likely that that expression will be calqued into the target language.

In Israeli Hebrew, one uses "má nishmà" ("what's heard?"), meaning "What's up?" Zuckermann argues that this is a calque not only of the Yiddish expression "vos hert zikh" (usually pronounced "v(o)sérts´kh"; "What's heard?", "What's up?") but also of the parallel expressions in Polish, Russian and Romanian. Whereas most Hebrew-revivalists were native Yiddish-speakers, many first-speakers of Modern Hebrew also spoke Russian or Polish. So a Polish-speaker in the 1930s might have used "má nishmà" not (only) due to the Yiddish "vos hert zikh" but also due to the Polish "co słychać". A Russian Jew might have used "ma nishma" due to "chto slyshno", and a Romanian Israeli would echo "ce se aude".^[6] According to Zuckermann, such multi-sourced calquing is a manifestation of the congruence principle.^[7]

See also[link]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Christopher Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", The Polish Review, vol. XXVIII, no. 2, 1983, pp. 83–87.
• Robb: German English Words germanenglishwords.com
• Ghil'ad Zuckermann, "Hybridity versus Revivability: Multiple Causation, Forms and Patterns", Journal of Language Contact, Varia 2, 2009, pp. 40–67.
• Ghil'ad Zuckermann, Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, ISBN 1-4039-1723-X.

External links[link]