Translating examples in linguistics texts

This study tries to shed light on the role of examples in linguistics texts and on the problems related to their translation. In such a context, a verbal example is a metalinguistic sign that designates itself, and it is technically called an “autonym”. Although verbal examples play a fundamental role in linguistics texts, they seem to resist the translation process, and specialized translators frequently overlook them as well. An analysis has been conducted of three key linguistics texts of the 20th century, written in English and French, and on their translations in German and Italian, carried out by linguist-translators, in order to investigate whether any specific strategy has been applied to the transfer of examples from the source language to the target language. The results show that translators often underestimate the importance of identifying appropriate strategies for the rendering of autonyms in the target language, with the result of making linguistics texts opaque.