КВАЛІФІКАЦІЙНОЇ РОБОТИ МАГІСТРА на тему: «Особливості перекладу сучасної політичної євротермінології на українську мову»

Abstract

The Master Thesis focuses on the systemic organization and relevant approaches to the translation of the specialized language Eurolect. The purpose of the study is to examine the peculiarities of the specialized language Eurolect and to define and analyze the translation techniques applied to translate Eurolect. The objectives of the study are: 1) to define the notion of Eurolect in terms of Eurolinguistics and describe its main linguistic properties; 2) to perform a structural analysis of Euroterminology; 3) to explore the nature of semantic deviations occurring systematically in the system of Eurolect and to identify lexico-grammatical deviations of Eurolect comparing to British English; 4) to define intra- and extralingual aspects influencing the process of translating Eurolect, especially Euroterminology; 5) to describe the methods of standardization of Euroterminology both on national and supra-national levels; 6) to analyze the translation techniques and strategies applied for the translating Eurolect into Ukrainian and to develop approaches to tackle the challenge of rendering Euroterminology. 7) to demonstrate the importance of implementing theoretical and practical courses in Eurolinguistics for future translators and linguists. To achieve the key objectives we applied the methods of analysis, generalization, comparative and typological methods together with the quantitative data processing. The subject matter of the paper given embraces structural, lexical, lexico grammatical aspects and the peculiarities of translation of the specialized language Eurolect. Methodological base of the paper covers the samples of the EU legislation documents in English and their translations officially accepted by the Ukrainian government. The relevance of the study is predetermined by the general tendencies in the Ukrainian policy toward Euro integration in the socio-political and cultural directions and by the strong necessity to research into the systematic organization and strategies of translation of the EU discourse to simplify the process of approaching the legislation of Ukraine to that of the EU. As Eurolect is a comparatively new object of linguistic research, the analysis of its systematic organization and peculiarities of translation represent novelty of the research provided. The paper consists of the introduction, four chapters, each of which is divided into sub-chapters and dedicated to meeting the objectives set by the research, conclusion, the list of references and appendixes. The introduction to the Master's Thesis gives a brief overview of the history of research of the Eurolect, represents the novelty of the research, establishes object, subject matters and the purpose of the study, delineates the methodological base and the practical value of the results obtained. The first chapter touches the issue of Eurolect as a key term in terms of Eurolinguistics. The first sub-chapter aims at defining Eurolect and its synonymic terms. Concerning different linguistic definitions given to Eurolect, in this paper Eurolect is considered as a geopolitical specialized language which was formed based on English, used for drafting the official EU documents and which is marked by lexical and grammatical structure. At the same time, Eurolect is not an absolute synonym to the terms Eurojargon and Eurospeak. Eurojargon refers to a type of jargon used by the EU officials and which is consequently not clear for the EU citizens. Eurospeak, in its turn, is similar in its meaning to Eurojargon and refers to the language used orally by the EU officials. Eurolect does not embrace oral informal communication and aims at denoting different EU phenomena. As the EU law language, Eurolect is marked by simplicity, clarity and accuracy of its content. The second sub-chapter addresses Euroterminology as a unique feature of Euolect. Euroterm is a term which denotes different economic, legal, cultural concepts inherent into the EU activity and represents the EU concept AQUIS COMMUNATAIRE, i.e. all the democratic values established by the EU. New terms usually enter the Eurolect as a result of the terminologization or borrowing. At the same time, there is a group of neologisms, i.e. Euronims which were created to denote exclusively the phenomena of the EU activity. The analysis of structural models of different terms from the authentic EU documents proved that affixation is the most productive way of forming the terms which refer to different activities of the EU or denote the doer or performer of the action. The compound terms are primarily formed by the combing of the stems or words. All the terminological word combinations appeared to be substantive due to their nominative function, and the majority of them are two-member combinations, which simplifies the text organization. The second chapter of the Thesis concerns the issues of lexico-semantic and grammatical peculiarities of Eurolect. In the first sub-chapter, the attention is focused on lexico-semantic transpositions of the lexical units in Eurolect. Eurolect represents new contexts and therefore is a core of semantic shifts which happen because of necessity to denote new concepts and objects. By applying the classification of semantic shifts elaborated by A. Blank to the EU terms, we established that metaphorization is the most widespread semantic shift of the lexical units in Eurolect. Metaphorisation is widely used by transferring the terms from one field of knowledge into the EU law context. It is also used by transferring the meaning of a word from the abstract to the narrower, and vice versa. Another group of semantic shifts is based on a complete change of a denotative meaning. Mostly, the change of a denotative meaning happens because of the lack of general knowledge by the EU officials or insufficient level of English, as well as the influence exerted by other European languages, i.e. French or German. Concretization and generalization are often identified as other typical semantic shifts of the lexical units in Eurolect. The second sub-chapter focuses on analyzing lexico-grammatical markers of Eurolect. By comparing the EU text with a legal text of the British legislation, it was proved that nominalization is highly used in the EU discourse. This tendency might have been explained by the requirements of the EU to draft the EU texts concisely and briefly as well by the intention of the EU officials to emphasize the action itself rather than performers of the action. However, long nominalization structures tend to complicate the understanding of the EU text. A change in the category of a number of nouns belongs to another grammatical deviation in the language Eurolect which is explained by the impact of other European languages, i.e. French and German. The grammatical deviation is usually accompanied by a semantic shift of a word. The third chapter of the paper aims to define the peculiarities of translation of Eurolect. The first sub-chapter concerns the intra- and extralingual aspects which affect the translation of the EU discourse. The intralingual aspect embraces the complicated character of the EU terminology which is represented by Euronims, abbreviations, metaphorical terms and nomenclatures on the lexical level, as well as tendency to use nominalization and changes in the category of a number of nouns on the syntactic and morphological levels. The extralingual aspects include the official requirements of the EU officials that postulate that the translation of any EU document should be accurate and concise despite the abstract concepts which are referred in the EU documents together with various derivations demonstrated by the source text. Besides, a translator of the EU texts should take into consideration a wide range of EU recipients, as well as the phenomenon of intertextuality. Last but not least, the influence performed on the EU legislation by both national and international law systems could complicate the process of translating the polysemantic terms. The second sub-chapter draws attention to the issue of standardization of Euroterminology both at national and supra-national levels. The standardization of terms presupposes establishment of corresponding translation units to the EU term in different languages and their internationalization. EU is actively involved in the process of standardization of terminology by creating different terminological databases and mono- and multilingual glossaries. It also launches different projects aimed at the standardization of the terminology in the countries newly joined the EU and at the unifying translators of the EU discourse across the EU. However, a relative lack of explanations to the newly coined terms in Eurodocuments and the use of the different terms with the same denotation indicates the insufficient level of standardization of the EU terminology on the supra-national level. This factor contributes to the elaborating different glossaries and terminological databases by different EU-members. Ukraine has also started implementing the process of standardization of Euroterminology through drafting multilingual dictionaries and holding conferences and projects aimed at raising awareness by the translators concerning the peculiarities of translation of Eurolect. The third sub-chapter touches upon the issue of analyzing possible translation strategies and techniques while translating euroterminology. Through analyzing the Euroterms and their Ukrainian translation correspondences derived from the text of the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine, we conclude that such translation techniques as calque, contextual and synonymous substitution, a choice of direct corresponding unit and transcoding are the most widespread techniques while rendering the terms of the EU. The direct corresponding unit is used for translating exclusively law terms common for both national law and EU discourses and thus fixed in dictionaries. Synonymous substitution is applied when the direct translation of the EU term is either not used in the target language or stylistically inappropriate for the law discourse of Ukraine. By appealing to synonymous substitution, a translator should always give their preference to that synonym which is the most frequent for the Ukrainian law discourse. Calque and contextual substitution are the most widespread techniques for translating Euroterminology. Calque is applied to render the titles of the documents, names of the EU institutions, or the fundamental values inherent into the EU activity. Usually, the terms which are translated with the help of calque are semantically transparent. However, using calque is not an appropriate solution for rendering the concepts which new for the Ukrainian legislation, as they complicate the understanding of the document. In its turn, contextual substitution is used during the translation of the unique concepts of the EU system especially when the source term was formed with the help of terminologization, and its meaning has undergone the semantic shift. In some cases, however, the wide use of contextual substitution for the same Euroterm can hinder the process of standardization of the EU terminology in Ukraine. Transcoding is mostly represented by the cases of adaptive transcoding to adapt translated units to the lexical and stylistic norms of the Ukrainian language. By rendering the Euroterms, one should apply transcoding only on the condition that there are no corresponding terminological units to the EU term in the Ukrainian language in order not to contaminate the target language with excessive borrowings. All the above-mentioned translation techniques are used frequently in combination with such transformations as permutation, transposition, and amplification to adjust the translated term to the linguistic norms of the Ukrainian language. The fourth chapter of the paper is dedicated to clarifying the importance of introducing the course in Eurolinguistics to future translators and linguists, and suggestions of implementing the corresponding activities into the curriculum of students. The necessity to prepare students to tackle the challenges of translating Euroterminology is emphasized by the specific character of Eurolect as a language system and the complicated nature of Euroterminology along with intra- and extralingual aspects exerting the influence on translation of the EU discourse and an important role of standardization of the EU terminology. To resolve the problem of translating Euroterminology, a future translator has to acquire the terminological competence, i.e. an ability to decode conceptual information represented by a term. The terminological competence is achieved through activities aimed at the identifying and using the terminological concepts of 98 the EU discourse, evaluating and using different terminological informational resources, an ability to choose the right corresponding units in the target language considering the semantic structure of the source terms, and implementing the acquired knowledge in the profession in future. Consequently, the terminological competence embraces the development of background knowledge, and information and technological sub-competences by future translators and linguists.