Idioms in La Rambla Paralela by Fernando Vallejo and Its Slovene Translation Vzporedna Ulica

Abstract

This article presents a contrastive analysis of phraseological units (mainly idioms and some comparatives) in the novel La Rambla paralela by Colombian author Fernando Vallejo and the corresponding Slovene ones in the Slovene translation of the novel Vzporedna ulica by Ferdinand Miklavc. The objective of the article is to look for the possible equivalences between the idioms in Spanish and in Slovene. The analysis shows, unsurprisingly, that there are few complete correspondences between idioms of these two geographically and linguistically distant languages, since they are a Slavic and a Romance language spoken in geographically distant regions. The diatopic varieties of Spanish are also taken into account, especially those referring to Colombian Spanish, and the fact that it is a narrative, that is, a literary language. However, some analyzed idioms are full equivalents. The idioms that appear more than once in the novel and are translated in different ways as well as the polysemic idioms are highlighted.