It is a class of loan in which phrase is borrowed from another language, but each of the elements of the phrase are translated.
This type of loan is known as a “calque”. It involves respecting the syntactical structures of the target language (week-end, “fin de semana”). There is also “structure calque” in which the syntactic construction is new to the target language (science fiction, “ciencia-ficción”).
Calque avoids the direct use of the foreign words and contributes to the richness of the target language.
Unlike a loan, which is a phonetic and morphologic adaptation, calque is a construction.
Considered as an import of foreign elements that turn out to be discordant in the target language, a calque can be produced at any level. There are four types of calque, which we will talk about in the future.
