"Da staunt der Laie". Technische (Pseudo-)Termini und fachsprachliche Ausdrücke in den Daniel-Düsentrieb-Comics

Ilaria Meloni

2020-01-01

---

Abstract

The ingenious inventor Daniel Gyro Gearloose always has the right invention at the right time in Duckburg, be it a “bread spreader” (Brotschmierapparat), a “subcopter” (Subcopter), a “thought transmission machine” (Gedankenübertragungsmaschine) or a “multidimensional ball” (multidimensionaler Ball). To name such objects as well as technical processes and terms, the engineer employs the usual technical vocabulary, which is often expanded ad hoc with new terms. On the basis of a corpus, this article attempts to analyse and classify technical (pseudo-)terms and expressions and to answer the following questions: What are the special features of these terms? And which word formation strategies are used in English-German and Italian-German translation? Do the neologisms fulfil the criteria for technical terms? Moreover, images play a central role in comics because, on the one hand, they clarify terms that may not be transparent and, on the other hand, they help to create comic situations that are based not least on the fact that technical terminology can be often misunderstood.