Book reviews

This volume contains a selection of works presented in the panel “Fraseología y discurso repetido: de cómo el lenguaje innova sobre la tradición” (“Phraseology and repeated speech: how language innovates over tradition”) during the XX Congreso de la Asociación Alemana de Hispanistas (XXth Congress of the German Association of Hispanists) held at the University of Heidelberg from 18^th–22^nd March 2015.

Phraseology has become an increasingly relevant and prolific field in contemporary Spanish linguistical studies. The evolution from a relatively obscure and ‘niche’ academic field – linked to more traditional works in paremiology – into a fully-fledged and thriving multidisciplinary branch has been a process that took over two decades to mature. This book is a testimony to the relevance and diversity of phraseology in contemporary Spanish linguistics, and in particular to the phraseological analysis in the Spanish–German language pair. It delves into several distinct, but correlated and complementary approaches to the field.

The book is divided into three thematic sections: “Contraste y traducción en la fraseología del par de lenguas alemán–español” (“Contrast and translation in the phraseology of the German–Spanish language pair”); “Fraseología del español: aspectos discursivos” (“Spanish phraseology: discursive aspects”); and “Esquemas fraseológicos” (“Phraseological schemata”).

As its title suggests, the first section deals with a functional approach to phraseology – with an emphasis on the role played by phraseological units in the craft of translation. The pragmatic/discursive analysis is treated in the second, while the third section is devoted to the formal/syntactical dimension. The first section contains eight papers:

I. Héctor Álvarez Mella and Frank Harslem: “Las unidades fraseológicas como estrategia de traducción alemán–español” (“Phraseological units as a German–Spanish translation strategy”).

This paper analyzes the usage of certain Spanish phrasemes that translators can use to translate non-phraseological components from the source text into German. It proposes the existence of specific phraseological translation strategies involving collocations and idioms through examples taken from excerpts of literary translations.

In the first part of this contribution, the different translation strategies regarding phraseological units (PU) are analyzed from the point of view of the source text. Here we cite some of the examples discussed in the paper:

1. Full equivalence: PU1 (source text) → PU1 (target text) auf die Probe stellen → poner a prueba

2. Partial equivalence: PU1 (source text) → PU2 (target text) das Heft in die Hand nehmen → tomar las riendas

3. Translation using free phrases: PU (source text) → nonPU (target text)

4. Omission: PU1 (source text) → 0 (target text)

5. Translation of a free phrase: nonPU (source text) → PU (target text) fast überleben → estar a punto de llevar a la tumba

6. Use of a PU in the target text without explicit motivation by the source text: 0 (source text) → PU (target text) losreiten → alejarse al galope

The second part is devoted to a case-by-case analysis of the translation with collocations, such as anstoßen → propinar un codazo. In the last part, the same is done with adverbial idioms, e.g., gleich → en el acto, schnell → a toda prisa; and with marker phrases, e.g., angeblich → por lo visto or übrigens → dicho sea de paso.

II. M.ª Ángeles Recio Ariza and J. Agustín Torijano Pérez: “La traducción en fraseología: el caso de los falsos amigos” (“Translation in phraseology: the case of false friends”).

The authors study the difficulty in the translation of some phraseological units depending on their degree of transparency or opacity. An increase in the degree of opacity of a PU assists in its location; however, it is precisely this opacity that makes it difficult to recognize the meaning of the PU. This is evident in the so-called false friends, where “semantic transparency” is only apparent. After a discussion of the theoretical basis and the typology, the authors extend their analysis and illustrate it with examples such as jmdn. auf dem Laufenden halten, which does not correspond to mantener a alguien andando, but to mantener a alguien informado; and Haare auf den Zähnen haben (“be a tough customer”), which does not correspond semantically to no tener pelos en la lengua (which means actually “not mince [one’s] words”, “speak one’s mind”), but to ser de armas tomar.

III. Elena Voellmer and Jenny Brumme: “El olfato del traductor a prueba. Los somatismos con Nase en Das Parfum, de Patrick Süskind” (“The translator’s sense of smell on trial. The somatisms with Nase in Das Parfum, by Patrick Süskind”).

In order to evoke the world of smells, central to the work, the author of the novel uses a whole panoply of resources, among which are numerous PU about the senses and, in particular, somatisms. The authors analyze the strategies followed by the translators when transferring the somatisms with Nase (nariz, nose), such as jmdm. etwas unter die Nase reiben (pasarle a alguien algo por la nariz); and the somatisms that are adjusted for this organ, such as den Verstand schärfen – die Nase schärfen (aguzar el intelecto – aguzar la nariz). This analysis is carried out for the Spanish, English, French and Romanian translations of the work.

IV. Aina Torrent: “Las locuciones evidenciales al parecer, por lo visto y otros frasemas con funciones similares: análisis de uso y reflexiones lexicográfias” (“The evidential idioms al parecer, por lo visto and other phrasemes with similar functions: usage analysis and lexicographical reflections”).

The author deals with the evidential value of the phraseological units al parecer and por lo visto, as well as with other phraseological units with a similar function. The lexicographical treatment of these units is also analyzed, and new proposals for the bilingual Spanish–German lexicography are presented. The study is supported by a semasiological dictionary: Diccionario español–alemán de locuciones del español de España (DEALEE) that is being developed by a research team of which the author is a member.

V. Herbert J. Holzinger and Cecilia López Roig: “En un plis plas/im Handumdrehen. Un estudio contrastivo español–alemán de las palabras ligadas fraseológicamente” (“En un plis plas/im Handumdrehen. A German–Spanish contrastive study of phraseologically linked words”).

In this work, the authors contrast – at a synchronic level – the phraseologically linked words (PLW) of Spanish and German from three perspectives: 1) the lexicographical treatment of the PLW and the PU that contain them; 2) the morphological structure; 3) the lexical structure and the syntactic functions of the PU of which they form part. This study, based on a corpus for the German–Spanish pair, aims to bring to light the similarities and differences in the respective phraseological subsystems and, on the other hand, to characterize each of them more precisely. After a terminological and methodological introduction, the lexicographical treatment of PLW is analyzed. The study concludes with the formal and functional characterization of PU with PLW.

VI. Laura Amigot Castillo and Concepción Rico Albert: “Marchando una de variantes fraseológicas aspectuales. Algunas notas contrastivas español–alemán” (“One portion of aspectual phraseological variants on the way! Some Spanish–German contrastive notes”).

The authors deal with the variants of emotional phraseologisms with a verbal basis that express different modes of action and aspectual oppositions. The authors propose the idea that they constitute a hybrid of grammatical and lexical variants with interesting semantic, grammatical and contrastive implications. After drawing some parallels between the different moments of verbal action expressed by the linguistic category lexical aspect and the different phases of the emotional event – that is, between the linguistic manifestation and the extralinguistic reality –, they analyze the aspectual oppositions that offer a greater productivity in their corpus of emotional phraseologisms of peninsular Spanish, proposing, in addition, some correspondences with the German language. After an introduction to emotional phraseology, the authors deal with internal, external and, particularly, aspectual variation. The corpus used and the methodology of organization through aspectual oppositions are then described, in order to carry out an analysis based on actual examples.

VII. Ferran Robles i Sabater: “El metadiscurso en la fraseología: la formulación y sus locuciones marcadoras” (“Metadiscourse in phraseology: formulation and its idiomatic markers”).

This work focuses on the study of ‘formulation shifters’: phrasemes with diverse configuration that show a behavior similar to that of a discursive link (linkage elements of textual organization), and, at the same time, guide the receiver’s understanding of the discourse, enabling the extraction of inferences about the communicated propositional content. The analysis of these idioms aims to reveal shared trends in their lexical composition, morphosyntactic fixation, distribution and prosody. The starting point is a characterization of these discourse markers and their relationship with formulation, in particular with the processes of textual production and reception. This is followed by a discussion of the relationship between the metalinguistic function and marker locutions and of the operations and markers of reformulation in German and Spanish, by carrying out a comparative analysis at different levels.

VIII. Sabine Geck: “Las conceptualizaciones metafóricas de loco y verrückt como base semántica de fraseologismos y palabras de sentido figurado en español y alemán” (“The metaphorical conceptualizations of loco and verrückt as a semantic basis for phraseologisms and figurative words in Spanish and German”).

The author performs a semantic description of the terms loco and verrückt (≈ “crazy”) by means of a script using Natural Semantic Metalanguage. After a theoretical introduction and historical-cultural contextualization, the author discusses the idealized metaphorical model of loco, illustrating it with examples from both languages and making a comparative and contrastive study of the existing metaphors in Spanish and German.

The second section “Fraseología del español: aspectos discursivos” (“Spanish phraseology: discursive aspects”) includes the following three works:

IX. Marina González Sanz: “El discurso repetido en la tertulia periodística de tema político” (“Repeated speech in journalistic get-togethers on political issues”)

In this work the author reviews, from a pragmatic point of view, the repeated speech in a corpus composed of 32 journalistic tertulias on political themes. She deals with the PU in this corpus and their typology and conducts a formal, semantic, and pragmatic-discursive analysis.

X. Elvira Manero Richard: “Relaciones co(n)textuales de las unidades fraseológicas en el discurso literario: El capitán Alatriste” (“Co(n)textual relationships of phraseological units in literary discourse: El capitán Alatriste”).

This study deals with the relationships established by the PU with the linguistic material that surrounds them by analyzing the links between these units and other lexical and phraseological elements of their co(n)text. The study is carried out on the novel El capitán Alatriste (1996, by Arturo and Carlota Pérez-Reverte). An analysis is performed on the semantic-discursive, pragmatic, and logical-conceptual typology of the co(n)textual relations of the PU in the novel.

XI. Ramón Martí Solano: “El ‘estado del arte’ de los calcos fraseológicos en español” (“The ‘state of the art’ of phraseological calques in Spanish”).

This work, based on an empirical corpus analysis, shows the impressive prevalence of calques in the phraseology of the Spanish language. The main conduits are English and also, although to a lesser extent, the French language. The channels of influence are examined: technical and professional languages, as well as political discourse. The methodological criteria for the location and classification of the loan translations are explained, followed by the study of several loan translations from English (techo de cristal, pato cojo, etc.) and French (poner en valor, negro sobre blanco, de alta gama).

The third section of the book “Esquemas fraseológicos” (“Phraseological schemata”) is devoted to phraseological syntactical schemata, with the following three studies:

XII. Berit Balzer: “Erre que erre/hart auf hart: análisis tipológico de la reduplicación léxica en español y en alemán” (“Erre que erre/hart auf hart: typological analysis of lexical reduplication in Spanish and German”).

The author proposes a classification of lexical reduplication that ranges from the simple reduplication of lexical units to the binary structure of some PU. The aim is to explain the transition from creative use of language to idiomatic use through the four stages that reduplication processes seem to go through: 1) infant babbling and unilexical reduplication; 2) juxtaposed and coordinated reduplication; 3) partial binomials; and 4) full binomials. The author performs an empirical analysis illustrating the types and subtypes of lexical reduplication with examples from German and Spanish.

XIII. Carmen Mellado Blanco and Belén López Meirama: “Esquemas sintácticos de [PREP + S]: el caso de [entre + S_{plural / corporal}]” (“Syntactic diagrams for [PREP + S]: the case of [entre + S_{plural / corporal}]”)

In this work the authors intend to display and validate the existence of the phraseological pattern [entre + S_{plural / corporal}] in Spanish. In this schema the reference of S is “an activity performed by means of the human or animal body” (p. 250) (for example, sollozos, manotazos, bufidos). The practicality of this phraseological scheme is determined, amongst other aspects, by the temporal-modal value as second predicate, by the semantic restrictions to which the slot S (internal fixation) is subjected to in speech, as well as by the strong expressiveness of the construction.

XIV. Carmela Pérez-Salazar: “Ni por lumbre: modelo fraseológico para la negación y el rechazo en la historia del español” (“Ni por lumbre: a phraseological model for denial and rejection in the history of Spanish”).

This study intends to display the continued diachronic validity of the same semantic-syntactic model for the creation of phraseologisms (idioms and pragmatic formulae) used throughout the historic evolution of Spanish to express emphatic negation, rejection or refutation.

As a corollary, it is worth noting the impeccable curation carried out by the editors who have managed to craft a volume that ventures into diverse subfields of phraseology and yet manages to generate, in general, an exceptional impression as an organic whole. The works are based on corpus, which makes it possible to work on ‘real text’, reducing the risk of reaching conclusions based on personal linguistic biases. This is particularly relevant in the first section of the book devoted to translation. In short, it is a balanced volume that also allows access to the state of the art of phraseological studies in the Spanish–German language pair. Of course, each reader may find some contributions more interesting than others depending on his or her particular field of work and interests.

José Manuel Pazos Bretaña

Correspondence address: jmpazos@ugr.es