Units of international lexicon and ways of rendering their meaning and lingual form. Translator’s false friends

Plan

Lexical Problems of Translation

1. Units of international lexicon and ways of rendering their meaning and lingual form. Translator’s false friends.

2. Units of nationally biased lexicon and ways of their translation.

3. Translation of idiomatic/Phraseological and stable expressions.

1. Units of International Lexicon and Ways of Rendering their Meaning.

By internationalisms are meant such language units which are borrowed from one and the same source language by at least three genealogically different languages in the same or similar lingual form and identical meaning, e.g. dollar - долар, atom - атом, director – директор. International may be not only words and phrases/word-group, but also morphemes – prefixes, suffixes and even inflections, nothing to say about root morphemes as the English or Ukrainian words fund - фонд, gas - газ, lord - лорд, park – парк.

Among the most often occurring international affixes in English and Ukrainian are the following:

o Prefixes: anti-/анти-, ex-/екс-, inter-/інтер-, trans-/транс-; as in antibody - антитіло, export (v.) - експортувати, international – інтернаціональний, transmission – трансмісія.

o Suffixes: -ar/-ар, -er/-ер, -ist/-іст, -ист, -ssion/-сія, -tion/-ція; as in actor - актор, volunteer - волонтер, humanist - гуманіст, constitution - конституція, aggression - агресія, humorist - гуморіст.

o Inflections: -um/-ум, (memorandum - меморандум), -us/-ус, (radius - радіус), -a/-а (formula - формула).

The lexicon of each developed language comprises a very large layer of foreign by origin words, word-groups/phrases and even a small number of sentences. The bulk of these borrowed morphemes, lexemes and syntaxymes are found in many languages of a culturally, historically, and often geographically common area as Europe, the Middle East or the Far East. They are used to designate notions belonging to different domains of human knowledge or activity.

There is distinguished:

a) the social and political terminology comprising the most commonly used political, economic, philosophical, historical, sociolinguistic units of lexicon; bank - банк, constitution - конституція, party - партія. Here also belongs terms of international law, diplomacy, numerous literary terms: drama - драма, metaphor - метафора, epithet - епітет.

b) natural history, science terminology (physics, mathematics, chemistry) used not only in special but also in scientific and popular works and in mass media: pneumonia - пневмонія, chemical reaction – хімічна реакція.

c) numerous technical terms (names of machine and their parts: motor - мотор, starter - стартер; as well as different means of transport: metro - метро, taxi - таксі; and communication: fax - факс, telegraph - телеграф, radio - радіо.)

These and other words and phrases of the kind are referred to as internationalisms, or more precisely genuine internationalisms (identical or similar lingual form and identical meaning in several languages).

The main characteristic feature of genuine internationalisms is their semantic singularity.

There exists one more international lexis called translation loan units of lexicon. These have also a generally common structural form but rarely a similarity in their orthographic form or sounding. Loan internationalisms are mostly different terms designating scientific and technological notions: brake - гальмо, specific gravity – питома вага, non-conducting - непровідність, agreement - узгодження.

Along with these two groups, there also exist many stable international phraseological expressions in each language’s lexicon. Their fund is constituted by the so-called absolute and near equivalents having a common language of origin – Greek, Latin or modern: Heel of Achilles – Ахіллесова п’ята, sword of Damocles – Дамоклів меч.

A separate subgroup of genuine internationalisms constitute proverbs, sayings and set expressions which are used in their foreign lingual form (they are predominantly of Latin, French, English, German origin): repetitio est mater studiorum (Lat.) – повторення – мати навчання, finita la comedia (Ital.) – настав кінець.

The identification of the international of some lexemes becomes much more difficult when dealing with polysemantic language sings, which are a common feature in present-day English but less common in Ukrainian.

Кондуктор

Провідник

Conductor Провід

Громовідвід

Диригент

Керівник

- international loan word

- international loan word

- international loan word

- pseudo-internationalism

- pseudo-internationalism

Художній Громадський

Artistic Мистецький Civil Цивільний

Артистичний Ввічливий

Чемний

Театральний

Дата добавления: 2014-01-07