TRANSLATION OF UNTRANSLATABLE WORDS: DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTIONS

Nikandrov Nikita

8 «В»

GBOU 1238

Moscow, 2017

TRANSLATION OF UNTRANSLATABLE WORDS: DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTIONS

As leaves on trees do with the running year,

The former fall and other will appear;

Just so it is in words, one Word will rise,

Look green, and flourish, when another dies.

Quintus Horatius Flaccus

Project purpose and objectives.

Project purpose: complex analysis of English neologisms and ways of their translation into Russian

Project objectives:

· Identify the role and significance of neologisms in the language

· Study the word-formation in English and Russian

· Apply the gained knowledge into practice to translate new neologisms into Russian using the word-formation methods.

The research is focused on the types of word formation. The subject of the research is neologisms and their translation into Russian.

A neologism (from Greek néo-, "new" and lógos, "speech") is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not yet been fully accepted into mainstream language. Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event.

Neologisms are often created by combining existing words or by giving words new and unique suffixes or prefixes. "Brunch" is an example of a neologism (breakfast + lunch). Lewis Carroll's "snark" (snake + shark) is also a combination of two words. Neologisms also can be created through abbreviation or acronym, by intentionally rhyming with existing words or simply through playing with sounds.

Neologisms can become popular through memetics, by way of mass media, the Internet, and word of mouth, including academic discourse in many fields renowned for their use of distinctive jargon, and often become accepted parts of the language. Other times, however, they disappear from common use just as readily as they appeared. Whether a neologism continues as part of the language depends on many factors, probably the most important of which is acceptance by the public. It is unusual, however, for a word to enter common use if it does not resemble another word or words in an identifiable way.

When a word or phrase is no longer "new", it is no longer a neologism. Neologisms may take decades to become "old", however. Opinions differ on exactly how old a word must be to cease being considered a neologism.

The term neologism is first attested in English in 1772, borrowed from French néologisme.

The term neologism has a broader meaning that includes not only "an entirely new lexical item" but also an existing word whose meaning has been altered. Sometimes, the latter process is called semantic shifting, or semantic extension. Neologisms are distinct from a person's idiolect, one's unique patterns of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.

Neologisms are usually introduced when an individual or individuals find that a specific notion is lacking a term in a language, or when the existing vocabulary is insufficiently detailed. The law, governmental bodies, and technology have a relatively high frequency of acquiring neologisms. Neologisms can also originate entirely online from social media and other forms of internet media. Because neologisms originate in one language, translations between languages can be difficult.

Types of word-formation.

In English grammar and morphology, affixation is the process of adding a morpheme — or affix— to a word to create either a different form of that word or a new word with a different meaning; affixation is the most common way of making new words in English.

The two primary kinds of affixation are prefixation, the addition of a prefix, and suffixation, the addition of a suffix, while clusters of affixes can be used to form complex words.

A large majority of new words in the English language today are either a result of blending — mashing two words or partial words together to form a new one — or affixation.

Prefixes include examples like "un-" "self-" and "re-" while suffixes come in the form of ending elements like "-hood" "-ing" or "-ed."

While prefixes typically maintain the word class (noun, verb, adjective, etc) of the word it's modifying, suffixes oftentimes change the form entirely, as is the case with "exploration" compared to "explore" or "highlighter" compared to "highlight."

Further, one can use multiple iterations of the same affixation to modify a word like grandmother to mean an entirely different person — as in "great-great grandmother," who would be your mother's mother's mother's mother or a "re-re-re-make of a film" wherein this film would be the fourth iteration of its kind.

Difference between affixation and blending. One form of word alteration and invention that is commonly mistaken for being an example of affixation is the process of blending words to form new ones, most notably present in the example of the marketing term "cranapple," where people naturally assume the root word "cran-" from "cranberry" is being applied as an affix.

However, affixes must be able to universally be attached to other morphemes and still make sense. This is not the case with the "cran-" root, which is only seen attached to another morpheme in marketing examples of juices that also contain cranberry juice like "crangrape" and "cranapple." Instead of being a stand-alone morpheme which conveys "of cranberry," the suffix "cran-" can only make sense when applied to other juices and is therefore considered a blend of two reduced words (cranberry and apple).

Though some words and prefixes can be both stand-alone morphemes or parts of blended words, meaning the phrases aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, most often words that are products of blending do not contain any actual productive affixes.

Compounding is one of the most ancient types of word formation. In English grammar, a compound noun (or nominal compound) is a construction made up of two or more nouns that function as a single noun. With somewhat arbitrary spelling rules, compound nouns can be written as separate words like tomato juice, as words linked by hyphens like sister-in-law or as one word like schoolteacher.

A compound noun whose form no longer clearly reveals its origin, such as bonfire or marshall, is sometimes called an amalgamated compound; many place names (or toponyms) are amalgamated compounds — for example, Norwich is the combination of "north" and "village" while Sussex is a combination of "south" and "Saxons."

One interesting aspect of most compounds nouns is that one of the origin words is syntactically dominant. This word, called the head word, grounds the word as a noun, such as the word "chair" in the compound noun "easychair."

Function of compound nouns. Creating a compound noun, or compounding, inherently changes the meaning of the parts of the new word, typically as a result of their tandem usage. Take for instance again the word "easychair" wherein the adjective "easy" describes a noun as being without difficulty or being comfortable and "chair" means a place to sit — the combined new word would mean a comfortable, hassel-free place to sit.

In this example, too, the form of the word easy changes from an adjective to a noun, based on the part of speech the headword (chair) functions as. This means that unlike an adjective-plus-noun phrase, a compound noun serves a different function and meaning altogether in a sentence.

Conversion, also called zero derivation, is a kind of word formation involving the creation of a word (of a new word class) from an existing word (of a different word class) without any change in form, which is to say, derivation using only zero. For example, the noun green in golf (referring to a putting-green) is derived ultimately from the adjective green.

Conversions from adjectives to nouns and vice versa are both very common and unnotable in English; much more remarked upon is the creation of a verb by converting a noun or other word (e.g., the adjective clean becomes the verb to clean).

Verb conversion in English.

In English, verbification typically involves simple conversion of a non-verb to a verb. The verbs to verbify and to verb, the first by derivation with an affix and the second by zero derivation, are themselves products of verbification, and, as might be guessed, the term to verb is often used more specifically, to refer only to verbification that does not involve a change in form.

Examples of verbification in the English language number in the thousands, including some of the most common words such as mail and e-mail, strike, talk, salt, pepper, switch, bed, sleep, ship, train, stop, drink, cup, lure, mutter, dress, dizzy, divorce, fool, merge, to be found on virtually every page in the dictionary. Thus, verbification is by no means confined to slang and has furnished English with countless new expressions: "access", as in "access the file", which was previously only a noun, as in "gain access to the file". Similar mainstream examples include "host", as in "host a party", and "chair", as in "chair the meeting". Other formations, such as "gift", are less widespread but nevertheless mainstream.

Verbification may have a bad reputation with some English users because it is such a potent source of neologisms. Although some neologistic products of verbification may meet considerable opposition from prescriptivist authorities (the verb sense of impact is a well-known example), most such derivations have become so central to the language after several centuries of use that they no longer draw notice.

Abbreviation is one of the most widely used types of word-formation. An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. It consists of a group of letters taken from the word or phrase. For example, the word abbreviation can itself be represented by the abbreviation abbr., abbrv., or abbrev..

An abbreviation is a shortening by any method; a contraction is a reduction of size by the drawing together of the parts. A contraction of a word is made by omitting certain letters or syllables and bringing together the first and last letters or elements; an abbreviation may be made by omitting certain portions from the interior or by cutting off a part. A contraction is an abbreviation, but an abbreviation is not necessarily a contraction. Acronyms and initialisms are regarded as subsets of abbreviations. They are abbreviations that consist of the initial letters or parts of words.

Borrowing from the other language is a type of the word formation when words are borrowed from the other language.

In linguistics, back-formation is the process of forming a new word (a neologism) by removing actual or supposed affixes from another word. Put simply, a back-formation is a shortened word (such as edit) created from a longer word (editor). Verb: back-form (which is itself a back-formation). Also called back-derivation.

The term back-formation was coined by Scottish lexicographer James Murray, the primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879 until 1915.

Back formation continues to make a few contributions to the language. Television has given televise on the model of revise/revision, and donation has given donate on the model of relate/relation. Babysitter and stage manager have given babysit and stage manage for obvious reasons.

The process has given us common verbs such as afflict (from affliction), enthuse (from enthusiasm), laze (from lazy), liaise (from liaison), aggress (from aggression), televise (from television), housekeep (from housekeeper), jell (from jelly), and many more."

Types of word formation in Russian are almost the same. They are prefixation, suffixation, pre-suffixation, stem-composition and borrowing from the other language.

In order to apply the gained knowledge I selected several neologisms from __, identified the type of word formation and tried to translate them using the same types of word formation in the Russian Language.

The results of my translation are presented in the table below.

Neologism

Translation

Type of word formation

Abibliophobia

Антибиблиофобия

Prefixal

Miswant

Нереальномечтание

Prefixal

Irritainment

Развлетительные телепрограммы

Concretion

Marmalade-dropper

Едаронятель

Concretion

Greenwash

Деньгоотмывательство

Stem-composition

Stagephoning

Телеартистизм

Stem-composition

Healthspan

Долгоздоровожитие

Stem-composition

Blamestorming

Тирада упеков

Stem-composition

Brinner

Ужинозавтрак

Suffixal

Spiraliser

Овощеслайсер

Suffixal

Rewilding

Переодичивание

Prefixal

Emoji

Телерожа

Borrowing from Japan

E-waste

Электролом

Concretion

Bouncebackability

Неунывание

Stem composition

Chugger

Волонтер

Abbreviation

Cyberslacking

Работоотлынивание

Stem-composition

Dental spa

Зубное спа

Stem-composition

Earwore

Песнезалипание

Stem-composition

Flexitarian

Отвегетарианивание

Concretion

Furkid

Ребенкозаменитель

Stem-composition

Latte factor

Фактор латте

Stem-composition

Me time

Личное время

Stem composition

Middle youth

Среднеюность

Stem-composition

Movieoke

Песнесцены

Сoncretion

Nouse

Носооперация

Concretion

Plagiarhythm

Музыкоплагиат

Stem-composition

Regifting

Передаривание

Prefixal

Seacharger

Морепереезжатель

Concretion

Slow food

Медленоеда

Stem-composition

Spoiler

Спойлер

Suffixal

Supersize

Большеразмерные

Stem-composition

Thumb generation

Свободногенерация

Stem-composition

Trolleyology

Троллинг

Concretion

Voice lift

Голосоизменитель

Stem-composition

Wardrobe malfunction

Шкафопроблема

Stem-composition

Zombie

Зомби

Borrowing from African

Resources:

Macmillan Words of the year. Macmillan Publishers Limited. 2005

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neologism

https://www.thoughtco.com/derivation-words-term-1690438

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/buzzword/recent.html