Abstract

When it is tried to translate a piece of information into another language in a way as literal as allowed by the second language, many times it can be observed that the meanings or the senses are not exactly the same. This paper analyzes this phenomenon from the perspective of the theory of mental models. Based on this framework, it is intended to describe what happens from a cognitive point of view in those cases. Two examples are taken into account to do that. The first one refers to the fact that some possessive adjectives indicate gender in English and those very possessive adjectives do not do that in Spanish. The second one considers the different translations a word such as ‘fish’ can have in Spanish.