Te Quiero

CHAPTER 8
LITERAL (DENOTATIVE) MEANING AND TRANSLATION ISSUES
Equivalence is the relationship between a Source Text and a corresponding Target Text; so the same meaning as the corresponding SourceText.
Meanings in a text that are fully supported by ordinary semantic conventions are normally known as literal meanings. In the case of words, it is this basic literal meaning that is given indictionary definitions. However, even the dictionary definition of a word, which is meant to crystallize exactly that range of “things” that a particular word can denote in everyday usage, is not withoutits problems.
Further to all of this, once words are put into different contexts, their literal meanings become even more flexible. These two facts make it infinitely difficult to pin down thespecific literal meaning of any text of any complexity.
SYNONYMY
To define a literal meaning, then, is to specify the “range” covered by a word or phrase in such a way that one knows what items areincluded in that range or category and what items are excluded from it.
Comparisons of literal meaning made possible by considering overlaps between categories, and visualized as intersections betweencircles, are usually drawn between linguistic expressions in the same language.
The semantic description of a language, for an assessment of types and degrees of semantic correspondence between items.There is, however, no reason why analogous comparisons may not be made between expressions from two or more different languages, as a way of assessing and representing types and degrees ofcross-linguistic semantic equivalence; semantic equivalence: full synonymy.
HYPERNYMY-HYPONYMY
The apparent “nearest equivalent” for translating the literal meaning of a Source Text expression falls short ofbeing a full Target Language synonym.
Hypernymy-hyponymy is so widespread in any given language that one can say that the entire fabric of linguistic reference is built up on such relationships....