MANAGING RISKS IN THE INTERPRETATION AND TRANSLATION OF TECHNICAL IDIOMS
MANAGING RISKS IN THE INTERPRETATION AND TRANSLATION OF TECHNICAL IDIOMS

Summary/Abstract: In its narrower sense, the class of linguistic expressions called “idioms” involves fixed and semantically opaque units. Considering that most combinations of words with figurative meaning related to technology can be more or less transparent, while some are completely opaque, there is a high risk of interpreting their meaning without thinking about the metaphors they contain. The mitigation in this case lies in making sense of their idiomatic meanings by projecting mental images based on their metaphors.Starting from findings reported by semantic and cognitive linguistic research, our paper validates the assumption that native speakers use idioms coming from technology instinctively, without thinking about their figurative nature, while language learners tend to use them denotatively and run the risk of misinterpretation.In combining the semantic analysis of a lexicographic corpus of technical idioms with an applied linguistic approach to contextualized idiomatic expressions, we intend to perform an assessment of risk factors involved in translating English and Romanian technology-based expressions and to indicate some efficient strategies for their mitigation.

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