Nestroy als Übersetzer und Übersetzter am Beispiel seiner Wortneubildungen (aus dem Französischen und ins Italienische und Englische)

This contribution deals with Nestroy’s poetic word creations (or occasionalisms) with their translation analysis. Johann Nepomuk Nestroy, the greatest Austrian comedy writer (1801–1862), transformed (rather than mere translating) many French vaudevilles into German. In this contribution, we exhaustively analyse the occasionalisms occurring in four of his comedies, which have been translated into English and one (Der Talisman) also into Italian. The main functions of Nestroy’s occasionalisms are to increase the effects of wordplay, especially in achieving a climax, and to allow reflection on the language itself. In Nestroy’s translations from French models, all occasionalisms are his own creations (with no French model). The Italian and especially English translations of his occasionalisms are often trivializing undertranslations, the English ones often do not translate them at all. Thus, the functions of occasionalisms most frequently get lost in translation, hence without pragmatic equivalence.