Nicht-Nichtkreativität in übersetzter Sprache. Allgemeine Überlegungen und empirische Untersuchungen zur Phraseologie Italo Calvino im Deutschen

The topic of this paper is the creative component of Italo Calvino’s phraseological use of language and its translation into German. To develop it, I will first focus on the concept of creativity in linguistics, in particular on Tullio De Mauro’s notion of “non non-creativity” (De Mauro 1982). It is argued that De Mauro’s conception of creativity goes beyond the concept developed in translation studies (Kußmaul 2000; Sattler-Hovdar 2016; Schreiber 2017; Malmkjær 2020) and may explain not only the phraseological use of signs but also the possibility of translating them. The theoreti- cally oriented part is then followed by the description of an empirical study carried out within the framework of a multi-year phraseology project called CREAMY (Calvino REpertoire for the Analysis of Multilingual PhraseologY), which is concerned with the pragmatic added value of phraseological lexemes. Some final remarks and observations conclude the paper