Equivalence, dictionnaires bilingues et phraséologie des nombres

Cosimo De Giovanni

2020-01-01

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Abstract

Equivalence, which is the basis of the structure of the bilingual dictionary, still suffers from a certain ambiguity in the literature of bilingual lexicography. Indeed, for decades the term has been misused by erroneously linking the notion of equivalence in lexicography to the field of translation. The reflections we will present arise from a series of observations regarding the lexicographical treatment of phraseological combinations, in particular the phraseology of numbers. These reflections will focus, among other things, on the role and nature of equivalence within bilingual lexicography; the introduction of the notion of lexicographical equidistance. Our positions will be validated by the analysis of the phraseological combination treize à la douzaine, its intralinguistic variants, and its equivalents in Italian. Our thesis on the notion of equidistance in bilingual lexicography has already been applied to simple lexemes (cf. DE GIOVANNI, 2011, 2013), while for all combinations of lexemes – idiomatic expressions, collocations, phrases, etc. – the notion is still in an experimental phase; further analyses will therefore be necessary to confirm its applicability.