Les articles prépositionnels spoza mis à l’épreuve

Abstract

The article is devoted to the question of the translation into French of the Polish preposition spoza (from behind) in the Polish-French bilingual dictionaries published in the last sixty years. The article first reports on the different meanings of the term appearing in monolingual Polish dictionaries. It then proposes an analysis, based on semantic criteria, of the French equivalents appearing in the Polish-French bilingual dictionaries. This analysis consists in particular in verifying whether the different meanings given to spoza in monolingual dictionaries also appear in bilingual dictionaries. Despite the relative frequency of use of this preposition in Polish, nearly half of the bilingual dictionaries consulted do not mention the term spoza. In addition, in the dictionary articles containing the term, the authors find a wide variety of French equivalents and point out numerous gaps and errors. One of the explanations advanced to understand the inaccuracy of certain French equivalents is the difficulty of French to express ablative relation, indicating direction from.