Calque

Inlinguistics, acalque(/kælk/) orloan translationis awordorphraseborrowed from anotherlanguagebyliteralword-for-word or root-for-roottranslation. When used as averb, “to calque” means to borrow a word or phrase from another language while translating its components, so as to create a new word or phrase (lexeme) in the target language. For instance, the English wordskyscraperhas been calqued in dozens of other languages,combining words for "sky" and "scrape" in each language, as for exampleWolkenkratzerin German,arranha-céuin Portuguese,rascacieloin Spanish,grattacieloin Italian,gökdelenin Turkish, andmatenrou (摩天楼)in Japanese.
Calquing is distinct fromphono-semantic matching: while calquing includessemantictranslation, it does not consist ofphoneticmatching—i.e., of retaining the approximatesoundof the borrowed word by matching it with a similar-sounding pre-existing word ormorphemein the target language.
Proving that a word is a calque sometimes requires more documentation than does an untranslated loanword because, in some cases, a similar phrase might have arisen in both languages independently. This is less likely to be the case when the grammar of the proposed calque is quite different from that of the borrowing language, or when the calque contains less obvious imagery.
One system classifies calques into five groups. This terminology is not universal:
Some linguists refer to aphonological calque, in which the pronunciation of a word is imitated in the other language.For example, the English word "radar" becomes the similar-sounding Chinese word雷达(pinyin:léidá),which literally means "to arrive (as fast) as thunder".
Partial calques, or loan blends, translate some parts of a compound but not others.For example, the name of the Irish digital television serviceSaorviewis a partial calque of that of the UK service "Freeview", translating the first half of the word from English to Irish but leaving the second half unchanged. Other examples include "liverwurst" (< GermanLeberwurst)and "apple strudel" (< GermanApfelstrudel).
The "computer mouse" was named in English for its resemblance to theanimal. Many other languages use their word for "mouse" for the "computer mouse", sometimes using adiminutiveor, inChinese, adding the word "cursor" (标), makingshǔbiāo"mouse cursor" (simplified Chinese:鼠标;traditional Chinese:鼠標;pinyin:shǔbiāo).Another example is the Spanish wordratónthat means both the animal and the computer mouse.
The common English phrase "flea market" is a loan translation of the Frenchmarché aux puces("market with fleas").At least 22 other languages calque the French expression directly or indirectly through another language.
The wordloanwordis a calque of theGermannounLehnwort. In contrast, the termcalqueis a loanword, from the Frenchnouncalque("tracing, imitation, close copy").
Another example of a common morpheme-by-morpheme loan-translation is of theEnglishword "skyscraper", akenning-like term which may be calqued using the word for "sky" or "cloud" and the word, variously, for "scrape", "scratch", "pierce", "sweep", "kiss", etc. At least 54 languages have their own versions of the English word.
SomeGermanicandSlavic languagesderived their words for "translation" from words meaning "carrying across" or "bringing across", calquing from the Latintranslātiōortrādūcō.
The Latinweekday namescame to be associated by ancient Germanic speakers with their own gods following a practice known asinterpretatio germanica: the Latin "Day ofMercury",Mercurii dies(latermercrediin modernFrench), was borrowed intoLate Proto-Germanicas the "Day ofWōđanaz" (Wodanesdag), which becameWōdnesdæginOld English, then "Wednesday" in Modern English.
Since at least 1894, according to theTrésor de la langue française informatisé, theFrenchtermcalquehas been used in itslinguisticsense, namely in a publication by Louis Duvau:
Since at least 1926, the termcalquehas been attested in English through a publication by the linguistOtakar Vočadlo[cs]:
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