PRAGMA-SEMANTIC DIMENSIONS OF COLOUR IDIOMS IN ENGLISH AND ROMANIAN
Abstract
Idioms, most notably the colour-related ones, pose numerous problems to
Romanian learners of English due to their multifaceted pragmatic and semantic
dimensions, which have to be decoded prior to their adequate comprehension and
subsequent translation in the target language. Their intrinsic symbolic value, which
decisively includes them into the category of culturally-bound elements, together
with other subjective factors, makes their acquisition and accurate translation even
more challenging. Moreover, there cases where equivalence is achieved by
adaptation, and the colour-designating word is omitted and compensated for by
other linguistic means. The present paper explores a number of colour idioms in
English and their Romanian equivalents, commenting upon their pragma-semantic
characteristics and their role in translation.