Pleonasm in English – Polish – German. Translation and Implications for Foreign Language Teaching

Abstract

The following article elaborates on the problem of pleonasms. These are expressions that occur in every language where one element repeats the meaning of the whole phrase and is thus redundant. The aim of the planned study is to ascertain how students of English and German deal with pleonasms and whether they retain them in translation. A second important aspect for examination is the extent of students’ translation experience and language awareness, measured in this study by how conscious their approach to pleonasms in translation work is. Two groups of students will be tested – those in their 2nd (without translation experience) and those in the 3rd year of study for a bachelor’s degree in Applied Linguistics. The results will be compared on the students’ completion of three translation tasks: translation from Polish into German and English, translation from German into Polish and from English into Polish. Based on the results of the translation tasks, several didactic implications are suggested to promote language awareness regarding, in particular, redundancy and pleonasms.