Els usos del verb 'fer' i la seva traducció a l'alemany

Abstract

Summary: The starting point of this contribution is that the Catalan verb fer appears to have a wider range of meaning than the German equivalent machen. In addition, frequent use of fer in the standard language seems to be more accepted than a repeated use of machen in German. I explore this hypothesis in two steps. First, I compare the entries for fer and machen in the standard dictionaries (Duden and DIEC). I then analyse the way that fer is translated into German in the novel Un crim imperfecte by Teresa Solana. The analysis of this literary text focuses on two aspects; firstly, fer as a verbum dicendi, a meaning which the German machen rarely has, and also fer as a light verb, a function shared with machen. The analysis demonstrates that the lexicographic data agree with the findings from the translation analysis thereby confirming the hypothesis. [Keywords: phraseology, light verb, verbum dicendi, Catalan, German, translation]