English Phraseological Units with an Onomastic Element and Their Translation Equivalents in Slovene

This article presents the findings of the study where 173 English onomastic phraseological units (PUs) were classified according to their translations into Slovene. Four groups were identified. More than 61% of all PUs belong to the group where the translation equivalent is either descriptive or represented by a one-word equivalent. This group is followed by two groups amounting to 18.50%, i.e., a group where the English PU is translated idiomatically with a proper name and a group where it is translated idiomatically with the same proper name. The smallest group where the English PU is translated by means of a different proper name amounts to less than 2%. It is evident that non-idiomatic descriptive translation or one-word equivalents exceed idiomatic translations of any kind, and that the majority of PUs in both languages are highly culture-specific, thus posing problems to non-native speakers in comprehension and translation