Interlingual rendering of political terminology

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Interlingual rendering of political terminology

A.V. Prokopenko, PhD in Philology, assistant professor

А. Kaminina, student Sumy State University

The article deals with the translation ofpolitical terms on the basis of the English-speaking political discourse. While investigating journalistic texts, a significant number of abbreviations was found. These abbreviations can be divided into the following: the names of countries; international organizations; defining weapons; international agreements, treaties, pacts. There are difficulties in translation of political abbreviations because some of them do not have the equivalents in the international and political vocabulary. The choice of one or another way of the translation offoreign shortenings in Ukrainian depends on many factors, including the structure of the shortening. The article indicates the peculiarities of the translation of abbreviations used in the political sphere. The results of the research prove that the most frequent ways of translation political abbreviations from English into Ukrainian are: equivalent translation, transliteration, transcription, and descriptive translation.

Key words: political discourse, political terms, transcription, transliteration, tracing, substitution, abbreviations.

Міжмовна передача політичної термінології

А.В. Прокопенко, канд. філол. наук, ст. викладач;

А. Камініна, студентка Сумський державний університет

Стаття присвячена дослідженню методів перекладу політичних термінів на тлі англомовного політичного дискурсу. При дослідженні публіцистичних текстів було виявлено чималу кількість абревіатур, які можна умовно розділити на наступні: назви країн; міжнародні організації; визначення зброї; міжнародні угоди, договори, пакти. Особливу складність при перекладі становлять політичні абревіатури, що не мають еквівалентів у міжнародній та політичній лексиці. Вибір того чи іншого способу перекладу іноземних скорочень українською залежить від багатьох факторів, в тому числі від структури скорочення. У дослідженні охарактеризовано прийоми перекладу абревіатур на прикладах політичних текстів. Встановлено, що при перекладі політичних абревіатур з англійської мови на українську в основному застосовують такі способи: використання еквівалентного українського скорочення, використання прийому транслітерації, використання транскрипції та описовий переклад.

Ключові слова: політичний дискурс, політичні терміни, транскрипція, транслітерація, калькування, заміна, абревіатури.

Межъязыковая передача политической терминологии

А.В. Прокопенко, канд. филол. наук, ст. преподаватель;

А. Каминина, студентка Сумский государственный университет

Ключевые слова: политический дискурс, политические термины, транскрипция, транслитерация, калькирование, замена, аббревиатуры.

Introduction

Political activity has always attracted people's attention and played an important role in the life of society. The place and relations of the country in the international arena depend on the political position or the situation in the country. In the modern world, the character of the development of socio-political life is quite dynamic due to the fact that today the requirements for the level of education are constantly increasing. The development of information technologies and the processes of globalization also motivate citizens to change themselves within the world society. Leaders of the states through their own speeches, addressing the international community and their citizens, determine the image of the state and its future prospects in development.

Preparation of speeches is a rather difficult process, because the politician's task is determined not only by covering some aspects of public life or just informing the audience about a certain problem but is to get a support from the other leaders and citizens, to make one or another position, to win the audience's attention, etc. This literature is characterized by such lexical features as euphemism, neologisms, abbreviations, various stylistic techniques, and a variety of functional styles, genres and the availability of various kinds of terms. Texts of socio-political orientation occupy one of the main positions in translation theory and, therefore, the relevance of the topic is due to these circumstances.

Typical features of terms are their accuracy, emotional neutrality, regularity, functionality, structural multiplicity, flexibility in development, the integrity of the structure, etc. The primary way of translating terms is to translate them with full or partial equivalents using lexical transformations. Thus, the objective of the article is to describe translation difficulties and the ways of the translation of political terms into the Ukrainian language.

The object of the research is a political terminology, that is, the lexical side of the politically-oriented language.

The tasks of this research are as follows:

1) To analyse the peculiarities of the use of terms in the English-speaking political discourse

2) To define the ways of translating of political terminology

3) To study the difficulties of the translation of abbreviations.

The subject of the research is the way of translation of the political terms that are being used in the English-speaking political discourse.

The following methods were used: the method of generalization is applied for determining the main features of the use of political terms; the descriptive method - for describing the key features of the political terms in the process of their translation; the method of comparison - for the analysis of methods of translating abbreviations, thus, it is determined which method is used most often.

interlingual transmission political terminology

Results of the research

Each branch of science, technology, production, and art has its own terminology. There are certain requirements for their use in any field. The term should be standard, it means that it should be used only in the form that is fixed in the dictionary; the term should be used only with one meaning, which is also fixed in the dictionary, and if it has many meanings, the author of the document must construct the text so that one can immediately understand what meaning of the term he has in mind.

One of the main functions of the political discourse is the impact on the interlocutor. Consequently, an important characteristic of a discourse, including the political one, is the communicative-pragmatic setting, which means the purposeful choice of speech utterances by the speaker in order to achieve a specific effect on the addressee.

Since the discourse is active it can be understood in terms of pragmatics. The pragmatic aspect of language and communication is connected with the relation of the person to the linguistic signs, with the expression of his attitudes, assessments, emotions, intentions in creation and perception of speech actions in the discourse [6].

The use of terms and borrowed words in politics has a sign character. The term reflects the individual ideological advantages of the individual and demonstrates the level of knowledge of the scientific paradigm. Often there is the effect of oversaturation of speech with unfamiliar words and it becomes obscure and negatively affects the recipient. The use of terms and borrowed words in political communication has a number of peculiarities. The word has the imprint of origin, the history of use, and the emergence in political communication. Often, it becomes a sign of a particular system of values, acquires an attributive character. Thus, the translator of political texts should have a high level of basic competence in politics and political sciences; he also must understand the essence of scientific discussions in this sphere [8, p. 298]. While determining, the term loses strict conceptuality, regularity, uniqueness, the concept embodied in it simplifies and the former term adapts to understanding in the everyday language [4, p. 112].

In general, the easiest way to translate any terms is to use special dictionaries, but since the “political term”, as a separate language unit is relatively new, it is difficult to find the right dictionary with translations of political terminology. Therefore, we present the main ways of translation of the terms, used in the political language, when the translator cannot have the appropriate dictionary and he can rely only on his own knowledge.

There are the following types of transformations:

1) Transcription

2) Transliteration

3) Tracing

4) Substitutions and their types: replacement of the form of the word; replacement of the part of speech; replacement of sentence members; replacement of an unbounded connection on the bounded and conversely; adding a word when translating for restoring the content of the original lexical unit; omission, withdrawing the word from a source language when translating; generalization, the transmission of words-realities that in one language have a specific meaning, and in another - a general one; anatomical translation, in which the structure of the source language is translated through the anatomical structure of the target language; descriptive translation [7].

Translation transformations are transformations by which one can make a transition from the original units to the units of translation in the specified sense. Since translation transformations are carried out with linguistic units that have both a content plan and an expression plan, they are of a formal semantic nature, transforming both the form and the meaning of the original units [5, p. 24].

All types of transformations carried out in the process of translation, can be reduced into four elementary types, namely:

1) Permutation

2) Substitute

3) Addition

4) Removing [3, p. 189].

The permutation as a form of translation transformation is a change in the position of the linguistic elements in the translation text in comparison to the source text. “A decision on cooperation was adopted by Ministers of Foreign Affairs yesterday ”. - “Вчора міністрами закордонних справ Великобританії та США було прийнято рішення щодо співробітництва” [3, p. 189].

Substitution is the most widespread type of translation transformation. There is a quite typical replacement of a noun with a verb when translating from English into Ukrainian: “It is our hope that the Human Rights Commission will be able to establish a presence in Guyana”. - “Ми сподіваємося, що Комісія з прав людини зможе послати своїх представників в Гайану” [3, p. 189].

The reasons for lexical additions in the text of the translation may be different. One of them is what can be called “formal uncertainty” of the semantic components of the phrase in the source language. “The new American Secretary of State has proposed a world conference on food supplies”. - “Новий державний секретар США запропонував скликати світову конференцію з питань продовольчих ресурсів ” [3, p. 189].

Removing is a directly opposite phenomenon to the addition. Most often words that are semantically redundant are removed. “The treaty was pronounced null and void”. - “Договір був оголошений недійсним (чи: “анульований”) ” [3, p. 189].

Here are the examples of transformations of political terms from the articles on political topics: “During the Labour Party conference in Blackpool, the Foreign Secretary spent most of his time in a secure communications room on the second floor on the Imperial hotel debating the wording of the United Nations resolution with his counterparts from America, France, Russia and China”. - “Протягом конференції Лейбористської партії в Блекпулі, міністр закордонних справ більшу частину свого часу проводив в добре охоронюваному конференц-залі на другому поверсі готелю “Імперіал” обговорюючи формулювання резолюції ООН зі своїми партнерами з Америки, Франції, Росії та Китаю” [10]. This example illustrates the use of tracing and substitution. In the translation of the phrase “Foreign Secretary”, the term “Secretary” is replaced by the term “міністр”.

Here is an example of choosing the equivalent of the term: “Diplomats said the key moment was President George W. Bush 's speech to the UN General Assembly last September.” - «Дипломати заявили, що ключовим моментом було звернення президента Джорджа Буша до Генеральної Асамблеї ООН у вересні» [10]. In this case, the equivalent of the term “Diplomat” is chosen. In addition, in the given example, at the same time, is also used tracing for the term “General Assembly”.

In the following example, the transliteration is applied: “His remarks may have elicited nervous chuckles from his Communist Party colleagues, but most of them ended up being executed on Stalin's orders”. - “Такі його висловлювання, можливо, викликали нервові усмішки у його колег по Комуністичній партії, але більшість з них закінчили тим, що їх стратили за наказом Сталіна ” [9].

In the English professional texts, a significant place occupies a variety of types of abbreviations. They function independently and are fixed in lexicographic sources. Abbreviations are one of the most difficult elements to understand and translate. The abbreviation of political terminology is related to the activities of people in the sphere of state and society management and the knowledge that are necessary for this activity.

The analysis of socio-political texts reveals the following trends and peculiarities of the formation and translation of political abbreviations from English into Ukrainian:

1) Transference of foreign shortenings with a Ukrainian equivalent. This method provides the presence of abbreviations in the language of translation. It is the best variant when it's already an approved unit in the language.

Here are examples of borrowed abbreviations: INGO (International Non-Governmental Organisation) - НДО; EMU (Economic and Monetary Union) - ЕВС; WHO (World Health Organisation) - ВООЗ. Many abbreviations are well-known and do not make any difficulties in translating. For example: “The USA administration will next week bring Israeli and Syrian negotiators together in a bid to resume peace talks which were suspended six months ago ”, “The UN General Secretary has called for a resumption of Geneva talks on Middle East”

[1]. In this sentence, there are well-known and simple abbreviations: “USA” - США and “UN”- ООН

2) The use of transliteration. Transliteration of abbreviations is typical for abbreviations of the proper names. Good examples are: UNESCO - ЮНЕСКО; INTERPOL - ІНТЕРПОЛ. “Tension over NATO's expansion revealed deep differences in approach to the problem between Russia 's Foreign Minister and NATO General Secretary” [1]. The type of this abbreviation is quite known in terms of semantics and is not difficult. Therefore, the use of transliteration “NA TO” - НА ТО is obvious

3) Using transcription. This method is often used to transfer Ukrainian acronyms, especially those that coincide with the letter composition. Such cases include, for example, writing in Ukrainian letters “Бі-Бі-Сі” - a pronunciation of English abbreviation BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation)

4) Descriptive translation. Such a translation is used in cases where the target language does not have an equivalent. The source unit “TV” is widespread in the English-speaking countries and is translated as “телебачення” or “телевізійний”. Translation by an expanded form is the translation of the source unit, which should be as accurate as possible

[2]. So, the abbreviation SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers, Europe) is transmitted in Ukrainian as “штаб верховного головнокомандуючого об'єднаними збройними силами НАТО у Європі”; AFSATCOM (Armed Forces Satellite Communications Agency) as “управління супутникового зв'язку Збройних сил”; ACDA (Arms Control and Disarmament Agency) as «управління з контролю озброєнь та роззброєння» etc.

The choice of one or another way of translation of foreign abbreviations in Ukrainian depends on many factors, including the structure of the shortening. The main difficulties are abbreviations that do not have equivalents in the international and political vocabulary. When translating abbreviations, the method of using the Ukrainian equivalent is applied (they are already fixed in specialized dictionaries), as well as the way of transliteration.

Conclusions

The political discourse is rich in the variety of used terms. Politicians are actively display their manipulation or hide the true situation by changing the meaning of the words. Any term has its own peculiarities, structural diversity, and emotional aspect and belongs to a particular sphere of life. Terms are constantly gaining new shades and meanings so that it complicates the work of the translator. Part of the terms is fixed and becomes a commonly used vocabulary, and part of them disappears. A large number of words, which are neutral themselves, acquire the properties of evaluation in the language of political rivals.

We have found out that in the translation of political terminology, the translator can apply different methods of translation, which allow transferring the speaker's relation to political rivals and expressing his or her opinion. First of all, the translator should know and use different types of translation transformations. Among these types are transcription, transliteration, tracing, and removing.

A complete understanding of abbreviated lexical units is possible only with the perfect knowledge of the subject to which the text is devoted. When translating political abbreviations from English into Ukrainian, the following methods are generally used: the use of a Ukrainian equivalent abbreviation, the use of transliteration, transcription usage, and descriptive translation. In addition, there are situations in which the abbreviation does not have the equivalent in the international vocabulary and the translator has to formulate an algorithm that will simplify translation when working with such a linguistic phenomenon as abbreviations.

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