NATIONALLY BIASED UNITS OF LEXICON AND WAYS OF THEIR TRANSLATION

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 625.

The distinguishing features find their reflection in different aspects of ma­terial and spiritual life and are materialized in separate words and word-groups designating national customs, traditions, folk rites and feasts, administrative or political systems, etc. Culturally biased, i.e., nationally specific are often elements in a governmental or election systems of a country; the monetary systems in most countries contain some nation­ally peculiar units as well (shilling, penny, rouble, dollar, hryvnia). Culturally biased are mostly the titles of address and the ways of conduct, and, at last but not at least, some articles of clothing/footware (cf. the Scottish kilt, tartan, the Ukrainian вишиванка, кептар or the American Indians' moccasins). Most peculiar are always national meals, beverages and even partaking of food, established as a result of a nation's agricultural traditions and consumption of peculiar products. The nationally bi­ased notions as non-equivalent units of lexicon are also observed in some national systems of weights and measures (cf. Englishmile, ounce, Ukrainian верства, пуд).

Hence, many specific no­tions referring to localisms i.e. being of exclusively local nature and circulation, remain within the boundaries of the national languages. They may sometimes be known even to a greater part of the national community. These may be archaic notions like the Ukrainian бунчук, виборний, осаул, тулумбас, сіряк or localisms like кулеша, ллачинда, верета, пательня, бануш, etc. Besides, many other rather wide-spread and well-known specific notions within a national community may often be of minor importance for the target language communities, which live under different economic, social, cultural or geographical conditions. Our ordinary reader, for example, would pay little if any attention to the highly specific and unique for every En­glishman notions like latkes, kedgeree (meals), proctor or whip (Par­liament), the Eton and Harrow match, Charring Cross, the East End, or Bloomsbury. These culturally biased names are often mentioned in English fiction, especially in the works by the British authors as Conan Doyle, J.Galsworthy, A.Cronin and others. Hence, the names have to be explained to our readers in the footnotes or in commentaries to the novels.

Not infrequently national specific units of the source language lexicon belonging to the social and political domain can be recog­nized by the target language speakers due to the existence of partly similar notions in their mother tongue. These kinds of notion are avail­able in English and in Ukrainian as well: new penny/shilling новий пенні/шилінґ; the Order of Merit орден «За заслуги»: Scout leader вожатий бойскаутів; медаль «За бойові заслуги» the Medal for Combat Valour; «Орден Ярослава Мудрого» the Order of Yaroslav the Wise; «Орден княгині Ольги» the Order of St. Princess Olha; класний керівник class tutor/form master; табель успішності й поведінки pupil's report/record card.

Despite the fact that the referential meaning of such and the like units of specific national lexicon may be either similar or at least closely related in English and Ukrainian (cf. class tutor/form master and класний керівник, залік test), they are still far from identical in their particular meaning. As a result, they can scarcely be substi­tuted for each other in the target language, which points to the no­tions being nationally biased by their nature.

Apart from these there are a lot more units of lexicon which have generally the same referential meaning in both the languages in question. For example: pancake, financial year, pie and many others can be fully substituted at language level for Ukrainian млинець, фінансовий рік, пиріг, etc. The difference between the no­tions in the two language is confined to some insignificant details. Thus, the financial year in Gr.Britain begins on April 1 and ends on March 31 the next year; pies are stuffed with minced steak-and-kidney meat or with onions/sweet mincemeat (mixture of currants, rai­sins, sugar, candied peeled apples, suet, etc.) and not with peas, beans, ground poppy seeds, soft cheese/curds or boiled rice as in our country. But: pop-corn кукурудзяні баранці is practically identical in English and Ukrainian.

As it may be observed, the units of culturally biased/specific national lexicon are rarely similar by their nature and meaning in ei­ther of the two languages. Consequently, vari­ous approaches to expressing their meanings in the target language must also exist.

WAYS OF RENDERING THE MEANING OF NATIONALLY BIASED UNITS OF LEXICON

I. By Transcription or Transliteration Exclusively The units of the nationally specific lexicon, whose meanings are rendered at the phonological level, usually belong to genuine internationalisms and comprise social and political units of lexicon in the main (cf. lord, lady, mister, shilling, kozak, hryvnia, etc.).

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