Articles

The article describes various methods of making monolingual dictionaries and is a case study of the National Photocorpus of the Polish Language.

The article considers the value of freedom in phraseology of the English, German and Russian languages, as well as deals with the semantic and corpus analysis. Values are a significant category in languages and cultures regulating a person’s perception of the surrounding reality and social behavior. Research into the value of freedom through analyzing idioms makes it possible to reveal the ways of conceptualization of this notion in different languages, to define the role and influence of cultures on the specificity of the semantic field “political values,” as well as to find peculiarities of idioms’ semantics. The article is an analysis of idioms representing the freedom of speech and choice. The freedom of speech is shown as an opportunity to openly express one’s opinions as well as an appeal to fairness. It is reflected in the inner form and in the lexical structure of idioms. The corpus approach has shown that under the influence of the inner form synonymous idioms turn out to be significantly different to one another in various contexts; regular compatibility with different lexemes is revealed, many idioms also acquire additional meanings. The freedom of choice is reflected in expressions describing reforms, manifestations of patriotism and policies aimed at supporting the country.

This article deals with the concept of word collocation as a syntagmatic characteristic typical of various functional styles. The results of the author’s analysis of designations of UK and US ministries and ministers functioning in the form of word collocations in media texts, reference texts, and fiction have revealed that the syntagmatic form of such word collocations can change depending on a particular functional style.

Untranslatable does not imply dead-ends in the process of translation. In fact, there are many translation strategies that can solve the problem. Non-equivalent words, idioms and special cultural expressions are often neglected in the field of translation. In this paper, we focus on the countermeasure for untranslatability in Russian-to-Chinese literary translation through the domestication, foreignization, interpretation and other translation strategies.

Mafia is used as a loan word in English and Russian alike. However, Italian mafia is a much more complex term with deep historical and cultural roots. The article discusses mafia-related terminology and ways to translate it into English and Russian. One of the best options is to use the so-called foreignization strategy, i.e. to retain the term in the source language while providing an appropriate explanation in the target language. To illustrate this point, the author defines the term omerta and suggests ways to translate it.

The article presents a view on translation as a complex and multidimensional phenomenon. Five aspects of the nature of translation are highlighted in regard to the lingual structure, culture, semiotics, sense (cognition) and communicative pragmatics. These aspects constitute different features of translation reality. Dealing with every aspect of translation, the article discriminates between translation and the usual behavior of a language sign in speech. Translation must be studied as a whole while taking into consideration all the aspects of its nature. The abovementioned aspects of translation, on the one hand, are interconnected, but, on the other hand, are opposed to each other. The language-related and cultural factors account for differences in translation, as the sense and communicative pragmatics represent the basis for achieving translation identity. The integrative approach to translation demands enhancing a static comparative text analysis with a dynamic view of translation as a semiotic phenomenon in the process of its development in speech. Methodologically, a dynamic view rests on the dialectics of philosophical categories of identity and difference, immobility (rest) and mobility (change). The contensive side of translation is formed by the opposition of sense and reference. This opposition accounts for the interpretative nature of translation. To prove the theoretical views, the article presents an analysis of English-to-Russian and Portuguese-to-Russian translation examples. The article may be useful to all those interested in general and specialized translation.

This article is an attempt to view translation as a decision-making process based on the concepts, categories and methods of the decision-making theory. The article presents the results of the experiment which made it possible to add new types of translation decisions and steps to existing ones as well as to analyze the notions of translation strategy and translation unit which are considered to be issues common to translation research.

The 1st International Forum “The Russian Language in the World Context and at International Organizations” took place from 28th of September to 3rd of October 2016 in Rome.

The present article is an analysis of the military lexis, its categorization and its presence in bilingual military dictionaries aimed at revealing general trends in the Russian lexicography and the lexicographical culture of specialized dictionaries, as well as advise on further development of the bilingual military dictionary format.

Double syntax constructions usually classified as ‘poetic license’ in a complicated text have been reviewed against the background of normal word order, inversion and dislocated syntax models in poetic translation from English into Russian. The constructions may be motivated by indefinite reference and referential conflict of pronominal substitution, anaphoric and cataphoric cohesion of the textual blocks. Under translation such constructions illustrated by examples from Emily Dickinson’s poetic texts and their translation variants by A. Gavrilov and I. Bliznestova are non-equivalent; the translation strategy is targeted at eliminating referential duality in the text.

The purpose of this article — to analyze what methods are used to obznacheniya symbolic expressions of Internet communication in Russian and Chinese. In this paper, we razlelyaem landmark designation at the numbers and emoticons. This study reflects the main current trends that need to be confirmed on a wide nabolee material: Chinese youth uses symbolic notation in Internet communication more and they have a broader semantic than Russian youth.

The article offers a comparative semantic analysis of the cluster “wild plants” in the Russian and Chuvash linguistic world images. The authors analyze both direct and figurative meanings of the Russian and Chuvash words and set expression, as well as free combinations of words from a given thematic group. Also analyzed are polysemy, metaphors, symbols, connotations of various Russian and Chuvash words, phraseology and set similes in the Russian and Chuvash languages. Special attention is paid to the Russian and Chuvash folklore. The Russian and Chuvash words from any given thematic group are part of the linguistic world images of the Russian and Chuvash ethnic groups. The analysis makes its contribution to the reconstruction of the integrated linguistic world image and helps to reveal some peculiarities of the national world perception.

The article studies the rational and emotional nature of the expressive means of language that form the basis for the comparative-stylistic analysis proposed by the outstanding Swiss linguist Charles Bally. Isolation, identification and the classification of expressive means of language aimed at determining the emotional component of speech are based on the method of comparison with the conceptual language of “pure ideas” reflecting peculiarities of the human psyche. The comparison may include languages united by a common psychological structure revealing the emotional side of language patterns that constitute the system due to the living language associations. The article also attempts to establish the origins of functionalism, which can be traced in the social aspects of language patterns that influence the parlance of a specific field as well as the functioning of language systems in similar situations of communication.

This article discusses possible consequences of the referendum on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Brexit) for the European language system, as well as the training system in the language industry in both the EU and the UK. The referendum brought to the surface the previously hidden contradiction between the UK, France and Germany on the use of official and working languages in the European Union. However, the Europeans’ hope to oust the English language cannot be realized because of Ireland and Malta’s standing on this issue. The exit of the UK from the EU will have a negative impact on English language learning programs aimed at training language experts for the language industry, as living language studies are being somewhat neglected in the UK education system today.

There is a common misconception that technical documentation is, by definition, clear and hence easy to translate. The terminology is often naively said to be unambiguous and internationally standardized. Even if a term is used in a wrong way, the context will set it right as it eases the understanding and further communication. The article deals with examples which show perfectly how bewildering both specific professional terms and household technical realia might be for native speakers of different languages, which poses a real challenge in translating these apparently “simple” and “unambiguous” units.