Los colores como referentes culturales e idiosincrásicos: un análisis traductológico y comparativo español-italiano

The aim of this paper is to present an analysis of a series of Spanish phraseological units that have colours at their core, with a view to checking whether there is a real equivalence between two related languages — Spanish and Italian — in terms of colours considered as cultural and idiosyncratic marks.Apart from observing whether the same colours are used in the two languages to express the same metaphorical values and nuances, we will study whether the phraseological heritage of the Italian language opts for one colour or for another linguistic and cultural element. In this sense, we will consider different possibilities and translation options deriving from the professional translation activity. To this end, a corpus of six Spanish novels and their corresponding Italian translations has been created. In terms of methodology, the qualitative and quantitative aspects have been combined through a hybrid approach, using Sketch Engine.The results of the translation analysis point to a partial lexical symmetry in the use of colours between Spanish and Italian in the field of contrastive phraseology.