Vernetzung und Modifikation von Phrasemen in Text und Übersetzung

This paper explores textual embedding, playful variation and context-bound modification of
idioms, with special focus on the challenges that translation of literature faces in such cases. The
analysis of selected text passages from two contemporary German novels and their Italian
versions underpins the high significance of these phenomena both for cross-linking and for
communicative and stylistic purposes of the text. In particular, cross-linking is reached through
semantic relations, in some cases isotopies, notably the extraction of one or more component(s)
of idioms taken up literally later in the novel, but also cumulative use and modifications of idioms.
On the whole, the Italian versions show a translational thinking oriented towards the purposes in
source text. The interplay of literal and idiomatic meaning is rendered well and creatively –
although modifications, for example, do not always convey the same linguistic playful intensity.