created 2025-03-14, & modified, =this.modified
Calque is a loan translation, or a word-for-word translation from one language to another.
For example Adam’s Apple, for the French pomme D’Adam.
- By heart (or off by heart) probably calques Middle French par cœur
- New Wave (artistic period) calques Nouvelle Vague
- rhinestone calques caillou du Rhin “Rhine pebble
- Earworm calques Ohrwurm
- nostalgia (formed from Greek νόστος “homecoming” plus ἄλγος “pain”) calque Heimweh “home sore”
- Milky Way calques via lactea
- Deep state calques Turkish derin devlet
Literal
The term literal translation implies that it is probably full of errors, since the translator has made no effort to (or is unable to) convey correct idioms or shades of meaning, for example, but it can also be a useful way of seeing how words are used to convey meaning in the source language.
Early machine translations (as of 1962 at least) were notorious for this type of translation, as they simply employed a database of words and their translations. Later attempts utilized common phrases, which resulted in better grammatical structure and the capture of idioms, but with many words left in the original language.