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Date Posted: 17:52:29 04/11/07 Wed
Author: Fabio Victor Vione
Subject: Re: Task One Group Four
In reply to: Adriana 's message, "Task One Group Four" on 06:07:54 04/08/07 Sun

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Faculdade de Letras
Inglês Produção de Textos - M1
Fabio Victor Vione

Task One

Idioms and Culture

Idioms, or “a group of words established by usage and having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words” (Oxford English Dictionary), are the type of expression which is most closely related to the culture of peoples, consequently varying a lot from language to language. Such expressions have various origins, depending on people’s traditions, history, habits etc and pose an enormous obstacle in multicultural situations, such as translations..
Since the relation between culture and idioms is so close, many aspects of the former are strongly evident in the later. In English, it can be easily said that one of the most common sources of idioms is seafaring life (the others are Shakespearian and Biblical sayings). England, by being an island, has an old and strong relation with the sea, what is reflected in its culture as a whole: arts, cuisine, folklore and, obviously, language. Examples of idioms related to life on the sea include “Know the ropes”, “Tell it to the marines”, “Three sheets to the wind”, “A shot across the bows”, “Between the Devil and the deep blue sea” and many others.
As a consequence of culture being so different among peoples, translating idioms is a very hard task, since single words cannot be translated individually. In these cases, the metaphorical meanings of expressions must be adapted to the other language’s, which is sometimes impossible without losing content as a consequence of the inexistency of similar idioms. If this is not observed, unintelligible expressions may be created. As an illustration, native speakers of English would probably not understand expressions such as “Do not come that it does not have”, “Uh, I burned my movie”, “Don't fill my bag” or “I need to take water out of my knee”, usually formulated by English students or with humorous intentions.
To sum up, Idioms are metaphorical constructs strongly related to culture and have their roots in various aspects, such as historical and traditional ones. Consequently, if this is not observed in various multicultural situations (as in translations, for example), many communicational problems may happen.

References:

MCARTHUR, Tom. Dictionary of English phrasal verbs and their idioms. London: Collins, 1974. 256 p vol. 31 no. 10, 1996.

MCMORDIE, W. English idioms and how to use them. 3. rd. London: Oxford University, 1954. 350 p

CROWTHER, Jonathan; ASHBY, Michael; HORNBY, Albert Sydney. Oxford advanced learner's dictionary of current english. 5th. ed. Oxford: Oxford University, 1995 1428 p ISBN 0194314219

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