LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

My article on bilingual phraseology, English-Spanish, is out, published by the Revista de la Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, no. 284. Please copy and paste:  Revista de la UADY https://www.revistauniversitaria.uady.mx/ru284.php Thank you. Hope you like it.

Bilingual dictionaries come in two parts, Spanish and English. They should overlap, but they don´t, and that is why I "invented" the unialphabet system: one dictionary with both languages together, making the search easier and the vetting less complicated. For example: I search for "when push comes to shove" in the online Collins Spanis-English dictionary and I get "a la hora de la verdad" which does not appear under "hora" or "verdad". A Spanish speaker would never come across "when push comes to shove" unless chance lends a hand. Check your bilingual dictionary and you will often find discrepancies in the two parts. Spoiler: the different teams of lexicographers are not in touch and don't even know one another.     

Bilingual phraseological lexicography is a peculiar craft. It is not about definitions or paraphrasing, but rather paralleling idioms, colocations, turns of phrase, metaphors even, in two languages. I repeat: in two languages. If an idiom appears in English, it must also appear in Spanish. Cross-referencing is vital in this craft, and easier to check when using my unialphabet system. Each idiomatic phrase must be paralleled with the same meaning. This, trust me, is a feat difficult to achieve. If you fall off a turnip truck , you te caerás de un guindo,  for example. If you have a horse-back opinion , es que tendrás ideas de bombero . And as we know the run-of-the-mill native speaker knows all about his language, and objections will always arise, so we must supply citations for the controversial posts. I have been working on my dictionary for over 4 years, 4-5 hours daily. The manuscript has, so far, 730,000 words. (I am just venting, don´t mind me.) 

  Just as there are word detectives (Cf. John Simpson´s The Word Detective ), I have become a Bilingual Phrase Sleuth. I track, trace, and nail down equivalent phrases in English and Spanish. Traits to become a lexicographic bilingual phrase sleuth are stubbornness, hard work, constant alertness, reading, time, and carloads of patience. Pay no heed to those who praise the wonders of the internet and databanks sky high. We still have a long way to go in bilingual lexicography. While we wait for the Internet and Google to become linguistically serious, let me tell you an English idiom: Get up on one´s hind legs ,  become assertive, aggressive, belligerent, etc., according to Webster´s New World Dictionary, 2nd Ed.  "McBride then got up on his hind legs and told them he and his mates would kiss what girls they wanted to." (Louis A. Mayer, Under the Jolly Roger , 2007.) "David finally got up on his hind legs and told the boss what he thought of him." The phrase sleuth h...

 " Estoy enfrascado" en la compilación y "puesta al día" de un Diccionario fraseológico, inglés y castellano, que "me lleva de cabeza." Si la lexicografía monolingüe es un arte dificultoso, no les voy a "dar la lata" sobre lo arduo que es practicarla con dos idiomas "a la par." Aparte de los problemas mecánicos (Word sólo funciona con un idioma a la vez: inglés o castellano, y se aturulla con los dos), "las idas y venidas" de una alengua a otra, tenemos el reto de encontrar frases que encajen bien y que representen la idea original.  A modo de ejemplo, les reto a que encuentren frases paralelas en inglés para los siguientes giros: --Y lo que te rondaré, morena --Ir para largo --Hacerse con --Hacer intención de *Las frases entrecomilladas arriba son giros del idioma español. 

Muchos años después, la fraseología paralela inglés/castellano me trae de cabeza de nuevo. Cada vez me parece más complicado encontrar equivalentes aceptables en uno u otro idioma. ¿Podré terminar este diccionario? -Here and now Ahora mismo, ya, en este preciso instante Let´s discuss the problem here and now Discutamos el problema ahora mismo -Here and there Por todas partes, aquí y allá You can find good houses to buy here and there in Madrid Se pueden comprar buenas casas en todas partes en Madrid -Here goes Ahí va Here goes the ball! ¡Ahí va la pelota! -Here´s to you! ¡A tu salud! Here´s to you, Peter! ¡A tu salud, Pedro! -Here lies Aquí yace Here lies a patriot Aquí yace un patriota -Here you are Toma Here you are, the five dollars you need Toma, los cinco dólares que necesitas -Here we go again Y dale con lo mismo, otra vez con la misma historia, retaíla Here we go again about the money Otra vez con la misma historia del dinero -From here on De aquí en ...

 Idiomatic expressions, idioms, are the bane of learners and translators, even the bane of Google Translate "lexicographers," and "goofies" behind DeepL.  -- "Usted es muy dueño de hacer lo que quiera" is rendered by DeepL as "you are very much in charge of doing what you want" instead of "you are very much at liberty to do what you want." -- "El jefe nos tiene a todos en un puño" appears as "the boss has all in a fist" rather than "under his thumb." -- "Coger el rábano por las hojas" is given as "pick up the radish by the leaves" and skirts the "to put the cart before the horse." -- "Una merienda de negros" turns out as "black market snack" when "a Chinese fire drill" would be a better equivalent. No offense meant, either way. -- "Bebo una cerveza de Pascuas a Ramos" is jokingly rendered as "I drink an Easter beer to bouquets."...

I am updating my A Phraseological Dictionary, English and Spanish . I put it together between 1991-94 and it was published by Ediciones del Serbal in 1995, 25 years ago. It has been, and still is, one of my best productions, mainly because bilingual dictionaries often err in idiomatic turns of phrase, the most complicated part of parallel language comparisons. This Sunday morning, and while I was working on it, I was musing about the difference in procedure that has come about in 25 years. I did have a computer, an IBM PS1, with a one-giga RAM, which cost me almost an arm and a leg. Now I am using a HP Envy with 16 gigas of RAM. Internet then was a toddler and I had to rely on mountains of dictionaries to check and compare. Piles of them, which I had to buy. I also had to run to the National Library to check books I could not afford. I soon discovered that I had to have a separate file for each letter in each language, which meant I had to close file A, and open file M, to che...