| loan translation |
| Definition: A word or phrase derived from another language by a word-for-word translation. |
| Example: The word superman was derived from the German Übermensch (overman). |
| Etymology: The phrase loan translation was coined as a loan translation of the German Lehnübersetzung, loan translation. |
| Oxford English Dictionary: The term's first citation in this sense is from 1933: "The Slavic languages translate the term [sc. conscientia] by ‘with’ and ‘knowledge’, as in Russian ["so-vest] ‘conscience’. This process, called *loan-translation, involves a semantic change: the native terms or the components which are united to create native terms, evidently undergo an extension of meaning." (L. Bloomfield Lang. xxv. 456) |