A calque/kælk/ or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word (Latin: "verbum pro verbo") translation. This list contains examples of calques in various languages.
J. R. R. Tolkien used the name "Bag End" as a calque of "cul-de-sac", to poke fun at the British use of French terms.[21]
From German or Dutch
Masterpiece: probably translation of Dutch meesterstuk or German Meisterstück: Dutch meester and German Meister, master + Dutch stuk and German Stück, piece of work.[22] (The Dutch translation of masterpiece is meesterwerk, the German translation is Meisterwerk. A Meisterstück is the craftwork that serves as a sort of "thesis" for a master craftsman-to-be.)
Scapegoat is a calque of עזאזל (Azazel) as ez ozel (literally, "the goat that departs", hence "[e]scape goat). This neologism is attributed to Tyndale's 1530 Bible translation.
Devil's advocate calques advocātus diabolī, referring to an official appointed to present arguments against a proposed canonization or beatification in the Catholic Church[49]
Wisdom tooth calques dēns sapientiae, which in turn calques Arabic aḍrāsu 'lḥikmi, which calques Greek σωϕρονιστῆρες, used by Hippocrates.[50]
quod erat demonstrandum 'which was to be demonstrated' is a calque of ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι (hoper edei deixai) 'what needed to be [shown] has been shown'.[65]
Examples of Romance language expressions calqued from foreign languages include:
French lune de miel, Catalan lluna de mel, Spanish luna de miel, Portuguese lua-de-mel, Italian luna di miele and Romanian luna de miere calque English honeymoon
French gratte-ciel, Catalan gratacels, Spanish rascacielos, Portuguese arranha-céus, Romanian zgârie-nori and Italian grattacielo calque English skyscraper
French sabot de Denver calques English Denver boot
French jardin d'enfants, Spanish jardín de infancia and Portuguese Jardim de infância calque German Kindergarten (children's garden)
Spanish baloncesto and Italian pallacanestro calque English basketball
Spanish balonvolea and Italian pallavolo calque English volleyball
French souris calques English mouse (computer peripheral)
French OVNI (Objet Volant Non Identifié) calques English UFO (Unidentified Flying Object)
In some dialects of French, the English term "weekend" becomes la fin de semaine ("the end of week"), a calque, but in some it is left untranslated as le week-end, a loanword.
French cor anglais (literally English horn) is a near-calque of English French horn. In English cor anglais refers to a completely different musical instrument.
Many calques found in Southwestern US Spanish come from English:
Spanish escuela alta calques English high school (secundaria or escuela secundaria in Standard Spanish)
Spanish grado (de escuela) calques English grade (in school) (nota in Standard Spanish)
Spanish manzana de Adán calques English Adam's apple (nuez de Adán, meaning "Adam's nut", in standard Spanish), which in turn is a calque of French pomme d'Adam
Icelandic rafmagn, "electricity", is a half-calqued[definition needed] coinage that literally means "amber power".
raf translates the Greek root ἤλεκτρον (ḗlektron), which means "amber"
magn, "power", is descriptive of electricity's nature but not a direct calque from the source word "electricity"
Samviska (conscience).
One of the early suggestions for an Icelandic translation of helicopter was þyrilvængja, twirling wings, a calque of the Greek helico-pteron. This was later replaced with þyrla.
Note:From a technical standpoint, Danish and the bokmål standard of Norwegian are the same language, with minor spelling and pronunciation differences (equivalent to British and American English). For this reason, they will share a section.
Danish børnehave and Norwegian barnehage calque German Kindergarten: barne = børne = Kinder = children; hage = have = Garten = garden[70]
Danish hjerneflugt and Norwegian hjerneflukt (literally, brain flight) calque English brain drain.[72]
Danish idiotsikker calques English "foolproof".[73]
loppemarked calques French marché aux puces (flea market, itself a calque from the French).[74]
mandag (Monday), from Old Norse mánadagr ("moon day") calques Latin dies lunæ.[75]
Danish overhoved and Norwegian overhode (head of a family, chief) calques German Oberhaupt (ober "over", Haupt "head").[76]
Danish samvittighed and Norwegian samvittighet (conscience) calques Latin (through Low German) conscientia (com "with", scire "to know").[77]
From sam- (co-) and vittig (today meaning "funny" but which stems from Low German, where it meant "reasonable", related to "vite" (to know) and English "wit".)
Mac. root човек (čovek, man) = Ger. mensch = 'people'
Macedonian облакодер (oblakoder) = calques English skyscraper:
Mac. root облак (oblak, cloud)
Mac. root дере (dere, to flay)
Macedonian клучен збор (klučen zbor) = calques English keyword:
Mac. root клуч (kluč, key)
Mac. root збор (zbor, word)
Some words were originally calqued into Russian and then absorbed into Macedonian, considering the close relatedness of the two languages. Therefore, many of these calques can also be considered Russianisms.
Russian
The poet Aleksandr Pushkin (1799–1837) was perhaps the most influential among the Russian literary figures who would transform the modern Russian language and vastly expand its ability to handle abstract and scientific concepts by importing the sophisticated vocabulary of Western intellectuals. [citation needed]
Although some Western vocabulary entered the language as loanwords – e.g., Italian salvietta, "napkin", was simply Russified in sound and spelling to салфетка (salfetka) – Pushkin and those he influenced most often preferred to render foreign borrowings into Russian by calquing. Compound words were broken down to their component roots, which were then translated piece-by-piece to their Slavic equivalents. But not all of the coinages caught on and became permanent additions to the lexicon; for example, любомудрие (ljubomudrie) was promoted by 19th-century Russian intellectuals as a calque of "philosophy", but the word eventually fell out of fashion, and modern Russian instead uses the loanword философия (filosofija).
Since Finnish, a Uralic language, differs radically in pronunciation and orthography from Indo-European languages, most loans adopted in Finnish either are calques or soon become such as foreign words are translated into Finnish. Examples include:
from Greek: sarvikuono (rhinoceros, from Greek ρινόκερος "rinokeros"),
from Latin: viisaudenhammas (wisdom tooth, from Latin "dens sapientiae"),
from English: jalkapallo (English "football", specifically referring to association football),
from English: koripallo (English "basketball"),
from English: kovalevy (English "hard disk"),
from French: kirpputori (flea market, French "marché aux puces"),
from German: lastentarha (German "Kindergarten"),
from German: panssarivaunu (German "Panzerwagen"),
from Swedish: pesukarhu (raccoon, from Swedish "tvättbjörn" and ultimately German "Waschbär"),
from Swedish: moottoritie (highway, from Swedish "motorväg"),
from Chinese: aivopesu (brainwash, from Chinese "xi nao"),
from Spanish: siniverinen (blue-blooded, from Spanish "de sangre azul")
When Jews immigrate to Israel, they often Hebraize their surnames. One approach to doing so was by calque from the original (often German or Yiddish) surname. For instance, Imi Lichtenfield (itself a half-calque[definition needed]), founder of the martial art Krav Maga, became Imi Sde-Or. Both last names mean "light field". For more examples and other approaches, see the article on Hebraization of surnames.
mesilat barzel (obsolete term for railway) from German Eisenbahn (iron track); "sach-rachok" (a proposed term for telephone that became famous for not catching on) from German "Fernsprecher" (itself a calque from Greek "telephone")
"zarkor" (searchlight) from German "Scheinwerfer" (light-thrower=>zorek-or, contracted to "zarkor")
iton (newspaper) from German Zeitung and Yiddish צײַטוּנג tsaytung (Zeit and Et both mean time or era,first syllable e become i with the -on suffix)
tappuach adamah (potato) from French pomme-de-terre
gan yeladim from German Kindergarten
kaduregel (כדורגל) (football, specifically association football/soccer) from English football; "kadursal" (basketball); "kaduryad" (handball);...
"kelev yam" (seal) from German "Seehund" ("sea dog")
"karnaf" (contraction of "keren af"/"nosehorn") from Greek rhinoceros, possibly via German Nashorn
names of many chemical elements are calqued from German and/or Greek: "meiman" (hydrogen) from Wasserstoff, "pachman" (carbon) from Kohlstoff, "chankan" (nitrogen) from Stickstoff, "chamtzan" (oxygen) from Sauerstoff, zarkhan (phosphorus) from Greek, and ashlagan (potassium) from English ("ashlag"=potash)
many computing terms are calqued from English: "luach em" (motherboard), "me`abed" (processor), "natav" (router), akhbar (mouse), cartis reshet (network card), sapak koach (power supply), mat`en (charger).
According to linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, the more contributing languages have a structurally identical expression, the more likely it is to be calqued into the target language. In Israeli (his term for "Modern Hebrew") one uses má nishmà, lit. "what's heard?", with the meaning of "what's up?". Zuckermann argues that this is a calque not only of the Yiddish expression ?וואָס הערט זיך (vos hert zikh?), but also of the parallel expressions in Polish, Russian and Romanian. Whereas most revivalists were native Yiddish-speakers, many first speakers of Modern Hebrew spoke Russian and Polish too. So a Polish speaker in the 1930s might have used má nishmà not (only) due to Yiddish vos hert zikh? but rather (also) due to Polish Co słychać? A Russian Jew might have used ma nishma due to Что слышно? (pronounced chto slyshno) and a Romanian Israeli would echo ce se aude.[79] According to Zuckermann, such multi-sourced calquing is a manifestation of the Congruence principle.[80]
Modern Malayalam is replete with calques from English. The calques manifest themselves as idioms and expressions and many have gone on to become clichés. However standalone words are very few. The following is a list of commonly used calque phrases/expressions.All of these are exact translations of the corresponding English phrases.
^Novotná, Z., "Contributions to the Study of Loan-Words and Hybrid Words in Modern Chinese", Archiv Orientální, (Prague), No. 35 (1967), pp. 613–648. (In English; examples of loan words and calques in Chinese)
^Novotná, Z., "Contributions to the Study of Loan-Words and Hybrid Words in Modern Chinese", Archiv Orientální, (Prague), No. 36 (1968), pp. 295–325. (In English; examples of loan words and calques in Chinese)
^Novotná, Z., "Contributions to the Study of Loan-Words and Hybrid Words in Modern Chinese", Archiv Orientální, (Prague), No. 37 (1969), pp. 48–75. (In English; examples of loan words and calques in Chinese)
^Tom A. Shippey, The Road to Middle Earth, Grafton, 1992 page 66 (1st Edition George Allen & Unwin 1982)
^masterpiece. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Retrieved 17 November 2008.
^Eleanor Detreville, "An Overview of Latin Morphological Calques on Technical Terms: Formation and Success", M.A. thesis, University of Georgia, 2015, full text
^Michèle Fruyt, "Latin Vocabulary", in James Clackson, ed., A Companion to the Latin Language, p. 152.