PHRASEOLOGISMS IN THE NOVEL MEDEA. VOICES BY CHRISTA WOLF – ORIGINAL AND TRANSLATION. A CONTRIBUTION TO DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN CONSTRUCTIVE PHRASEOLOGY AND TRANSLATOLOGY

Abstract

There are relatively few phraselogisms in the novel Medea. Voices by Christa Wolf. They appear mainly as lexicalised verbal phrases, possibly with a verb synonym as a hyperonym; in addition, there are also occasional, non-lexicalised phrase-formatives to find. Their number and structure changes in translations from German into ʻBosnianʼ or the Serbian language; in Medeja. Glasovi, translated by Vahidin Preljević, lexicalised verbal phrases prevail, some of them absolutely equivalent to the lexical units (LU) in the original text, others only partially. In the second, Serbian text, under the same name – Medeja. Glasovi, translated into Serbian by Mirjana Milošević-Wittmann, the number of phraseologisms decreases; instead of verbal phrases as formatives, the author uses verbs which are only partially equivalent to the units in the original text. Compared to V. Preljević’s LU-phrasemes, these are partially synonymous. As a result, the text loses some of its creativity and expressivity.