A proverb is a short familiar saying expressing popular wisdom, a truth or a moral lesson in an imaginative and concise way.
Proverbs have much in common with set expressions because their lexical components are also constant, their meaning is traditional and mostly figurative and they are introduced into speech ready-made. That is why Vinogradov and others consider that proverbs are to be studied together with phraseological unities.
We should remember that a proverb is a sentence by itself, a group of words so related as to convey a completed thought.
e.g. East or West, home is best
Still water runs deep
Birds of a feather flock together
Sayings are grammatically not finished expressions, they don’t teach us anything. They are just apt word-combinations which may be used by us in time of need.
e.g. Don’t look a gift horse into the mouth (proverb)
To look a gift horse into the mouth (saying)
Russ.: поговорка – цветочек, пословица – ягодка
In the English language there are many proverbs which have the same meaning: proverbs-synonyms.
e.g. One rotten apple decays all the bush
One scabbed sheep spoils the whole flock
We may account for it by the fact that those proverbs were created in different communities, then they were generalized and entered the vocabulary. Sometimes it happens that one proverb is created in one language, and another is borrowed into the same language.
e.g. Овчинка выделки не стоит.(Русск.)
Игра не стоит свеч. (из. Франц.) – The game is not worth the candle.
A great number of proverbs have universal application.
RussianUkrainianEnglish German
Не всё то золото, Не все тe золото, Not all is gold Ende gut -
что блестит. що блищить. that glitters. alles gut
Конец – делу венец. Кінець вінчає діло. All is well that
ends well.
The habit of using idioms correctly comes with practice.
It is the idiomatic aspect of a language that is the most difficult for a foreigner to master.
Ways of Translating Phraseological Units
It’s not an easy task to translate a phraseological unit. The most expedient way is to find a proper equivalent in another language.
But this way of translation, though it gives the best results, is very limited. In most cases we have no such equivalents in the language we deal with.
e.g. to buy a pig in a poke
Enough to swear by.
The murder will out.
When we can’t find a proper equivalent we resort to descriptive or even word-for-word translation. If it doesn’t help, we give a general idea of the expression.
e.g. Why ask the bishop when the Pope is around?
