TY - JOUR AU - KUBACKI, Artur Dariusz AU - KIERMEIER, Ursula PY - 2017/06/15 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - „WHEN WILL I BECOME A SCHNITZEL? – I HOPE NEVER.” REAL AND FALSE FRIENDS OF A TRANSLATOR IN TRANSLATION TEACHING JF - Comparative Legilinguistics JA - cl VL - 29 IS - SE - Articles DO - 10.14746/cl.2017.29.05 UR - https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/cl/article/view/8321 SP - 85-103 AB - The phenomenon of false friends of a translator relates to a pair of languages. It occurs when words or phrases that sound or look similar in two languages differ to a significant degree in meaning. Consequently, learners using a false friend make a fool of themselves as it has been illustrated in the title of the article with an English-German joke. Politicians in particular are notorious for using false friends (Helmut Kohl and the German EU commissioner Günther Oettinger might be good examples). This phenomenon appeared in literature as well: for instance attempts at communicating in English by the police officer Kluftingers in crime novels co-written by Klüpfel/Kobr. The use of a false friend shames not only politicians but also translators and interpreters. In traditional foreign language teaching, students are taught to avoid false friends at all costs. There are dictionaries devoted only to false friends and learners are supposed to learn them by heart. Especially interpreters are recommended to do that because, unlike translators, they do not have time while interpreting to check whether a similar word or phrase coming automatically to mind is a false friend or a real one, that is – in other words – whether the word or phrase has the equivalent meaning in the target language. The authors of this article, who have considerable professional experience of translation, would like to point out the dangers of one-sided teaching practice with regard to false friends, taking German and Polish and German and English as examples. Such teaching may discourage learners - for fear of humiliating themselves - from using actual linguistic analogies. This negative impact of the way ER -