On the peculiarities of the English penitentiary discourse rendering in Ukrainian translation

Ключові слова: дискурс, пенітенціарні тексти, конкретизація, генералізація, модуляція, граматична трансформація, юриспруденція.

Discussion, commenting, interpretation as secondary to other genres

Peripheric genres of penitentiary discourse naturally co-exist with the genres forming the core of the professional penitentiary communication, where the speaker is a representative of the penitentiary system and communication takes place in the frame of status and role relations.

This classification singles out social and institutional communication, communication between the penitentiary institution and citizens.

Communication is realized via mass media genres, in particular press, radio, TV, Internet genres as by these channels the communication between the institutions and citizens is realized. The most recurrent genres are applications, addresses, appellations, appeals and manifestations.

When rendering penitentiary texts in translation the following distinctive features should be taken into account:

— genre;

— communicative;

— monostylistic;

— ethnically specific.

These features constitute the complex model of the source text. The genre constituent outlines the key requirements of this text type apart from the communicative situation involved. The communicative model forms the idea of presuppositions and illocutions, which might be employed by translators even prior to translation, it also focuses attention and singles out the semantic invariant in the source text. Respectively, these dominants are rendered via various linguistic means. Consequently, any communication has its own chronological specificity, namely -- the location, the time and the addressee.

Penitentiary discourse is distinguished not only by lexical peculiarities, but also by the specific structure and realization (syntactic constructions, written form). The preservation of the interaction of the source and target texts is essential as penitentiary discourse is most often presented by instructions and directives. There are strict limitations on all levels, from the macrolevel of text to paragraphs, sentences and clauses, in accordance with the requirements for the standardized forms, cliche and acknowledged ways of coherence realization. The complexity of informational loading of each sentence and the relevance of the absence of ambiguity in interpretation, result in the necessity to use extended sentences with complex syntax, high level of hypotaxis and repetition of syntactic abruptness. When translating instructions and manuals logical clauses of condition and reason are extensively employed.

It is expected from translators that target penitentiary texts should be parallel to the source ones and almost identical in their pragmatics. Thus, translation texts should be as clear and transparent as source ones and at the same time should arouse identical associations to those of the penitentiary discourse authors.

Therefore, the most relevant features of translation are the following: penitentiary texts as linguistic categories are distinguished by certain genreand stylistic peculiarities, in particular: imperative and expressive and emotional content; the strictly limited structure of the majority of penitentiary texts; the parcellation of texts into sections, points and items; visual form of presentation and the segmentation of paragraphs.

According to their content and functional peculiarities all penitentiary texts may be subdivided into informative texts and reglementary texts. The former are represented by penitentiary scientific, penitentiary technical, penitentiary informational and penitentiary publicist texts. The latter are mainly statutes, decrees, penitentiary official papers and penitentiary legislative documents.

Penitentiary scientific texts are characterized by official character. Their most relevant stylistic feature is logical grounding which is preconditioned by the necessity of the further exploitation and distribution of research findings in the various fields of penitentiary discourse application. Another distinctive feature is the high expressivity of utterances, achieved not due to high emotivity but via the employment of such visual aids as tactic schemes, schemes of the organizational structure of formations. The high percentage of terms is another distinctive feature of penitentiary texts.

Penitentiary technical texts are represented by instructions and manuals of different kinds of ammunition, weapon, means of defense in journals and periodicals. Unlike penitentiary scientific texts, penitentiary technical texts include scientific popular periodicals with the more limited use of professional terms but the more extensive employment of drawings and pictures.

Penitentiary informational texts are aimed at data distribution about certain notions, terms and fundamentals of penitentiary discourse. Penitentiary publicist texts are expected to facilitate the comprehension of social processes in the world. Their function is to inform and at the same time to influence the target audience and in a certain way to manipulate it.

Statutes and decrees introduce limitations in the life and activity of penitentiary institution officers and convicts. They are distinguished by calm official businesslike manner of communication, direct indication at the orders and their sequence. Thus, ambiguity and misunderstanding are avoided. The recipient is limited in the perception and interpretation of the message and should be guided by the regulations of the statute or manual or instruction.

Penitentiary official papers include directives, reports, applications, judgements, verdicts and sentences. Their main distinctive features are imperative manner of appeal and high expressivity.

Scholars divide all texts into term generative texts of theoretical explanatory nature and term registered reference books.

The main objective of the penitentiary texts pragmatics is to inform and to persuade. The appeal to the modern penitentiary system realia is efficient in manipulating the public opinion and in advertising. The most recurrent there prove to be professional terms aimed at verbalizing general notions about jails, cells, judgement, law and order. Among the two prevailing communicative tactics used there are the tactic of guilt conviction and the tactic of innocence acknowledgement.

As it has been mentioned before, penitentiary texts have originated on the merge of official and scientific functional styles thus preserving to a certain extent the essential features of both. The similarity with official style is proved by the wide distribution of impersonal sentences, imperatives, cliche, stereotype structures of secondary predication, namely infinitive, participial, gerundial and absolute nominative clauses, the limited variability of verb tense forms and the minimal employment of tropes.

Official style, in its turn, is characterized by certain peculiarities of rendering in translation. The main objective consists in preserving the semantic invariant and in conveying the original author's message of the source texts. It's also worth noting that there are some features characteristic of the publicist style.

The high level of structural presentation which accounts for such features as brevity, clarity, precision and coherence.

Among the stylistic peculiarities of the penitentiary texts there are:

1) terms (general scientific terms and professional terms);

2) the prevalence of abstract lexis over the concrete one;

3) abbreviations and shortenings.

On the lexical level penitentiary texts bear more features of scientific texts than official papers. This should also be taken into account when translating penitentiary texts.

Penitentiary periodicals also possess certain features which cannot but influence the translation process. Consequently, certain distinctive publicist style features co-exist with some particular official style peculiarities which results in the specific coloring of penitentiary periodicals.

The titles of penitentiary texts are coined in accordance with the following rules: the prevalence of verbs over nominative parts of speech, the omission of the verb «to be», the use of elliptical structures.

Moreover, intertextuality is also considered typical of penitentiary texts. Intertextuality is interpreted as the property of texts, relying on their interaction and explicit or implicit allusion. Still another prominent feature is the employment of euphemisms which are understood as neutral words or expressions employed instead of synonymic words to disguise the essence of the phenomenon described. The three main functions of euphemisms in penitentiary texts are:

- etiquette requirements in describing human appearance, temperament and mental abilities;

- omission of obscene and vulgar words, in particular taboo words due to the limitations introduced by religion, domestic and foreign police nd etiquette;

- the disguise of the negative sides of life in different field of social activity.

The translation of euphemisms is challenging. Still explication or descriptive translation is considered to be the most suitable way of translating euphemisms in penitentiary texts. Two other recurrent translation operations at work are addition and loan translation. However, calques are less widely used than descriptive translation.

However, the linguistic analysis of the penitentiary texts has also revealed the means of dysphemisation realization. Dysphemisms like euphemisms have the manipulative potential but their role is contrary to that one of euphemisms -- they are to form negative attitude of the target audience to the notions, objects and phenomena described.

Thus, rendering both euphemisms and dysphemisms in translation is rather challenging. The most relevant strategy in translating such lexis is rather functional than formal conformity in the stylistic aspect. Penitentiary publicist texts are distinguished by a relatively small amount of emotionally colored elements of terminological vocabulary.