Translating economic colour idioms as a way of developing cross-cultural economic discourse

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is two-fold: first, it aims to investigate to what extent colour idioms in economic language can generate discourse. As metaphorical constructions, economic colour idioms can help conceptualize experience by means of the conceptual metaphor. They also help frame economic reality linguistically, thus developing discourse-generating power. Second, it seeks to indicate the degree to which the translation of these idioms can accommodate the linguistic forms of the reality illustrated by the economic discourse in the target language. The numerous calques used in the translation of economic colour idioms indicate that new cultural forms disseminated by English language worldwide have been linguistically assimilated and accommodated in other languages, contributing to the process of acculturation and the development of cross-cultural discourse.