Polysemy, synonymy, and metaphor: The use of theHistorical Thesaurus of Englishin translation studies

Abstract This article proposes that the consideration of translation equivalences for lexical items in English benefits from reference to the diachronic digital resources of Historical Thesaurus of English and its offshoot projects, Mapping Metaphor with the Historical Thesaurus, and the Semantic Annotation and Mark-Up for Enhancing Lexical Searches semantic tagger. These resources are the result of a long-term endeavour to code every sense of every headword in the lexicographical record of the English language. There has hitherto been little research into the relevance of these resources to the translation challenges raised by synonymy, polysemy, and the semantic radiation of lexical items. The relevance of these resources and their potential application to the study of equivalence in translation is illustrated with reference to a selection of semantic domains in a Portuguese and a Chinese translation of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild.