- •Translation
- •1. The translation of proper names
- •1.1. People’s names
- •1.2. Geographical names
- •1.3. The names of companies, newspapers, educational institutions, and public bodies
- •2. The translation of internationalisms and culturally-biased lexis
- •2.1. Internationalisms and their types
- •2.2. The translation of international words
- •2.3. Pseudo-internationalisms and their translation.
- •2.4. Culturally biased lexis and ways of its translation
- •3. The translation of idioms, proverbs, and sayings
- •3.1. Phraseological units and their semantic classification
- •3.2. Rules of translating idioms, proverbs, and sayings
- •2. Translation of idioms by choosing near equivalents
- •3. Translation by choosing genuine idiomatic analogies
- •4. Translating idioms by choosing approximate analogies
- •5. Descriptive translating of idiomatic and set expressions
- •4. The rendering of contextual meanings of the indefinite and definite articles
- •4.1. The translation of the indefinite article
- •4.2. The translation of the definite article
- •5. The translation of nominal phrases
- •6. The translation of verbals and verbal complexes
- •7. Translation transformations
- •7.1. Ways of translating non-equivalent words
- •7.2. Lexical transformations
- •7.3. Grammatical transformations
- •7.4. Stylistic transformations
2. The translation of internationalisms and culturally-biased lexis
2.1. Internationalisms and their types
Internationalisms are 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 (cf. dollar – долар, atom – атом, interest – інтерес, etc.). International, however, may be not only words and phrases/word-groups, but also morphemes: prefixes (antibody – антитіло, export (v.) – експортувати, international – інтернаціональний), suffixes (actor – актор, humanist – гуманіст), and even grammatical suffixes (memorandum – меморандум, radius – радіус, formula – формула).
The lexicon of each developed language comprises a very large layer of foreign by origin words. The bulk of these borrowed words designate the notions belonging to different domains of human knowledge or activity: a) the social and political terminology comprising the most commonly used political, economic, philosophical, historical, juridical, sociological units of lexicon (audit, bank, constitution, parliament, party, etc.); b) the terms designating international literary process (drama, poet, metaphor, etc.); c) scientific terminology (physics, mathematics, genetics, chemistry); d) numerous technical terms (motor, carter, starter), as well as e) names of different means of transport (bus, metro, taxi) and correspondence (fax, telegraph, telex, radio, e-mail), etc.
Such words and phrases are referred to as internationalisms, or more precisely genuine internationalisms. The latter never considerably change their lingual (orthographic or sounding) form nor their internationally established meaning. (Cf.: motor - мотор, audit - аудит, therapy - терапія). The main characteristic feature of genuine internationalisms is their semantic singularity, i.e. their lexical identity in the source language and in all target languages remains unchanged.
Apart from many thousands of genuine international words and word-combinations, which retain an identical or similar lingual form and identical meaning in several languages, there exists another group of international lexis called loan internationalisms. These have a generally common structural form (of a word or a word combination), but rarely a similarity in their orthographic form or sounding: citric acid – лимонна кислота, lead oxide – окис свинцю; specific gravity – питома вага; nonconductivity – непровідність).
There also exist fixed international phraseological/idiomatic expressions that retain the same (or nearly the same) denotative and connotative meaning in different languages due to a common origin: Heel of Achilles – ахіллесова п'ята; sword of Damocles – дамоклів меч; to cross/pass the Rubicon – перейти Рубікон; the die is cast – жереб кинуто; after us the deluge – після нас хоч потоп; the fair sex – прекрасна стать; tilt at windmills – воювати з вітряками; the tree of knowledge – дерево пізнання, etc.