Anastasiya Perebendyuk
Kamianets-Podilskyi Ivan Ohienko National University
Scientific Supervisor: PhD, Senior Lecturer Svider I.A.
TRANSLATION OF AUTHOR’S NEOLOGISMS IN LITERARY TEXT
One of the central and current problem of modern linguistics today is the investigation of new words created by the writer or author’s neologisms in the texts of different genres. So-called author’s new formations have not yet found their permanent place in the English vocabulary, first of all, because of their specific nature created by the author’s imagination. In addition, these innovations require a special attention in the field of translation into another language, while the necessary translation strategy transferring the concepts should be more developed in modern translation.
Keywords: author’s neologism, innovation, translation, literary text, method.
Author’s neologisms perform not only nominative, but also evaluative and emotive functions. They are rarely used beyond the context, do not become widespread and, as a rule, remain the property of an individual style, so that their novelty and originality are preserved. B. Tomashevsky gives individual-author’s neologisms the following assessment: “Neologism must always be taken as a certain invention of this particular artist, it is unique. As soon as it begins to be repeated, enters into the general dictionary, it loses that stylistic effect, on which the author counted” [4, с. 176].
Translation process is not simply a substitution of one language by another. In translation different cultures, personalities, structures, literature, different epochs and levels of development, traditions and settings are connected. In the case of individual-author neologisms, the difficulties with the translation process lie in the fact that the translator has to deal with several meanings of the word, which are more subjective than objective. There is a problem of understanding new words and the lack of correspondences in the target language. In this article we try to analyze the main ways of translating author’s neologisms including the following: transcription and transliteration, calquing, descriptive translation, omission of words and functional substitution.
Speaking English is even unnecessary to use the method of transcription and transliteration, it is enough to have a good visual perception [2, p. 396]. It should be noted that this method of translation should be applied very carefully, as it may lead to the loss of the value of the translated word.
The aim of calquing is to create a new word or a consistent combination of the translation language that copies the structure of the original lexical unit. That’s what the translator does when he translates the word superpower as “наддержава“, mass culture as “масова культура,” green revolution as a “зелена революція” [3, p. 88].
Descriptive translation conveys the meaning of a foreign word with the help of more or less common explanation. The disadvantage of descriptive translation is its verbose language. Here is an example: California carjacking spree leaves four dead, including gunman. – У Каліфорнії розваги з викраданням автомобіля закінчилися смертю трьох жертв і самого злочинця [4, с. 184]. Instead of one word in the original language, carjacking, translator uses three words – розваги з викраданням автомобіля, because he does not see another way to maximally transfer the meaning of a word from one language to another, so that it does not lose its meaning.
A reader of the text should not feel any difference in translation. When all of the above-mentioned methods are not able to cope with this task, translators choose the functional replacement, such as: Mirror of Erised – Дзеркало Яцрес [5, с. 231]. A functional replacement is most often used to translate author’s neologisms, since it is relevant in the translation of words that do not have the equivalents in the target language, that is, when none of the proposed words by vocabulary are appropriate to this context.
Omission is used with words that are semantically redundant, that is, express a meaning that can be deleted from the text. As the system of any language as a whole, as well as specific speech works have a fairly large degree of redundancy, which makes it possible to carry out certain omissions in the translation process [1, p. 32].
Thus, the process of translating neologisms from English into Ukrainian occurs in two stages: 1. Clarification of meaning of neologism; 2. Translation from a source language into a target one. It may be done by using different translation methods mentioned above. The translator should take into account all the things that the author wanted to convey by one word or another and give its value as accurately as possible. Of course, the translator’s suggested version should be clear to the reader.
The study of different lexical units in fiction and fantasy as specific genres of literature is of current interest. The problem of the emergence and use of new words, has always been of interest to linguists, especially in our era, when the emancipation of language and the escape of the author’s imagination into creating different situations in the fictional world leads to the emergence of various new lexical formations.
Taking into consideration all that was mentioned above, we can note that the author’s new formations or neologisms, functioning in the literary text, are the reflection of the author’s main intentions, which are peculiar for a virtual picture of the world. These words are the most important constant for the perception of the text content by a reader, who is a direct recipient of the information. Author’s neologisms may take another additional functions besides their direct function, that are capable of carrying some extra (connotative) meanings, allowing the reader to imagine an unreal world depicted by an author.
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