Учебное пособие 1669

Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-Didactic Researches” Issue 4 (27), 2019 ISSN 2587-8093

UDC 811.111’25

PECULIARITIES OF EMERGENCE AND TRANSLATION OF REALIAS-NEOLOGISMS

FROM THE ENGLISH INTO RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

(IN THE CONTEXT OF THE LINGUISTIC THEORY OF TRANSLATION)

V.V. Kozlova

____________________________________________________________________________

Voronezh State Technical University Ph.D. in Philology, Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages and technology of translation

Victoria V. Kozlova e-mail: victoriak_@mail.ru

____________________________________________________________________________

Statement of the problem. The vocabulary reflects all the changes taking place in society, and the emergence of new objects, phenomena, concepts inevitably leads to the creation of new words or the meaning expansion of the existing words.

Results. Today new words and meanings appear in English in a significant number. About 1000 realiasneologisms were added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in 2019, which is an indicator of a neological boom in linguistics. We are trying to determine in which areas the greatest word-formation activity is revealed. Also, within the framework of the linguistic theory of translation, an attempt to determine priority methods for translating such realias-neologisms from English into Russian is made.

Conclusion. The emergence of realias-neologisms prevails today in such areas of human activity as digital technology, social sphere, economics, politics, science, mass culture, etc. Popular search queries on the Internet also become the object of study of linguists, these words become speech trends. The translation of neologisms is a difficult task, but may be fulfilled, in our case, within the framework of the linguistic theory of translation.

Key words: translation, realia-neologism, word, the English language, the Russian language, dictionary, linguistic theory of translation, linguistic status, lexeme.

For citation: Kozlova V.V. Peculiarities of emergence and translation of realias-neologisms from the English into Russian language (in the context of the linguistic theory of translation) / V.V. Kozlova // Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-didactic Researches”. – 2019. - № 4 (27). – P. 104-111.

Introduction

The appearance of new words (realias-neologisms) is an important positive phenomenon for any language, since it is an indicator that this language is alive. No one doubts that the English language lives and is actively developing, and the evidence of this, in particular, can be the significant productive ability of this language to form new words or new, sometimes unexpected and contradictory meanings in long-familiar lexemes. It is in the vocabulary that all changes occurring in society are displayed - the appearance of new objects, phenomena, concepts inevitably entails the creation of new words or a modification of the semantics of existing words.

If new words demonstrate “staying power” and “increasing use” [1 **], there is a need for these words to be fixed in dictionaries, to have a generally accepted definition and their language status.

Research methodology

The object of this study was the lexical composition of modern English in its synchronous section, and the subject of the study was the new lexical units (realias-neologisms), which have the status of a language fact. The purpose of this article is 1) to identify those areas of human activity in which today most often, realias-neologisms are formed and implemented

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© Kozlova V.V., 2019

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in the linguistic system of the English language at the lexicographic level, as well as 2) the definition of the main ways of translating neologisms as words-realias. In the course of collecting the material and further analysing the patterns of the lexical development of the language at the present stage, when determining the main trends that affect these processes and identifying the specifics typical for this particular research vector, we used a number of scientific methods, namely, the analysis and synthesis method, scientific observation method, generalization method, description method and some others. The material for our study was almost 1000 new words added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in 2019. The dictionary is constantly updated to keep up with the rhythm with which American English is developing. Neologism is added to the dictionary if editors find evidence that this word has “frequent use, widespread use, and meaningful use” [1 **].

The results of the study

The term neologism is used to understand words or phrases created to designate new objects, phenomena or concepts. In modern linguistics there is no unity of opinion regarding the linguistic status of neologism. In our work, we define the linguistic status of the term neologism as a realia, which we accept in this case as a root concept. In the middle of the last century, two Bulgarian researchers S. Vlakhov and S. Florin first used the term realia in their book “Untranslatable in Translation” [1]. After that, the term realia began to be widely used in translation studies to refer to words that name objects and concepts of culture, historical epoch, social system, state structure, i.e. these are lexical units that convey the specific characteristics of one people that distinguish it from other peoples. Neologism as a word calling a concept, object, or phenomenon that first appeared in the culture of a certain country can be rightfully called realia. In this article, we will use neologism and realia-neologism as synonymous terms, which include a complex of conceptual nuances characteristic of these linguistic phenomena.

Speaking of neologisms in the English language, the reasons and features of their occurrence and functioning in speech at the present stage, we will appeal to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. This dictionary is one of the most respected English-language dictionaries of American English. The history of the publication began in 1806 and today the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is a cluster of publications, which includes dictionaries of synonyms, geographical terms, biographies, medical terms, sports terms and many other dictionaries. Merriam-Webster has its own website, which gives free access to the company's online dictionaries, and also launched a mobile application in the form of a mobile dictionary that allows smartphone users to access publishing house resources.

It is in the vocabulary where all changes occurring in the life of society are reflected. Our analysis showed that, as of today, new words and meanings appear in the English language not only in significant, but in very pronounced quantities. The added 1,000 realias-neologisms in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in 2019 is an indicator of a neological boom in linguistics, which is a reflection of our reality, because when a society develops progressively, the language also does not record spasmodic peaks. And during periods of social, political, technological evolutionary outbreaks, the language immediately detects these impulses by a sharp change / reorganization of its composition, at least at the lexical level. For comparison, in 2014, only 150 new words and definitions were added to this dictionary. It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary itself, neologism is:

1. a new word or expression or a new meaning of a word [1**]

In this regard, we consider as a realia-neologism not only a new, sometimes artificially created lexeme, but also a new meaning of an existing lexical unit.

By the way, we would like to note that the Merriam-Webster Dictionary gives the term neologism another definition - Medical Definition (psychology):

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2. neologism: a new word that is coined especially by a person affected with schizophrenia, is meaningless except to the coiner, and is typically a combination of two existing words or a shortening or distortion of an existing word [1**].

We would like to believe that the lexicographical fixation of neologism is an indicator of the correspondence of a new word to the first definition, although doubts sometimes arise about this. For example, the expressive interjection expression w00t (two zeros in the middle of the

“word”), invented by gamers, was recognized as the word of the year in the USA in 2007 and entered dictionaries as neologism.

I. Spheres of human activity producing realias-neologisms

Entering the dictionary, the word (or its new meaning) becomes officially recognized and existing. Thus, if a word enters a dictionary, then the fact of the existence of a given phenomenon or concept has a fixed and proved basis. If we turn to our material (and it is a synchronous section of modern English, we selected only the realias-neologisms that appeared in American English in 2019), then it will be interesting to analyze not only those trends that affect the life of modern English and how it changes under their pressure, but, obviously, and how actual reality invariably experiences the influence of the language and also changes thanks to it. The life and evolution of this closed system is extremely interesting for us as linguists, offering us a lot of reasons for discussion and research.

In our work, we set a goal to identify those areas of human activity that entailed the active formation of realias-neologisms, which were included not only in everyday life, but also in dictionaries. During the analysis, at the stage of determining the criterion according to which the grouping of the material would be correct and demonstrative, it became clear that the quantitative method would not be the only one taken into account when revealing the popularity and relevance of the sphere producing neologisms. It is impossible to imagine modern life without the Internet, the source of the overwhelming amount of information consumed, so the number of web requests that determine the public’s interest in a particular neologism became the second key criterion along with the quantitative method, when we revealed the number of realiasneologisms that appeared in a particular area of life or knowledge.

The public resonance, involvement and interest of the reader, viewer, user in topics sometimes becomes decisive today even in matters relating to scientific research - this is a kind of tribute to the time and needs of society. Based on these trends, we obtained the following result in our work:

1. Identity, racial issues.

The most socially significant, resonant, leading in terms of the number of Internet queries and the number of critical articles addressed to the working group of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary was the publication’s decision to include in its dictionary a new meaning to the word

"they". Now this pronoun can be used in relation to one person who does not identify himself as either a man or a woman. This neologism is aimed at those people whose gender identity is outside the binary gender system. Proponents of this decision draw an analogy with how the

English pronoun “you” - singular developed from the pronoun “you” - plural, that is, it is supposed that this process is quite natural and has interlanguage precedent. There are critics who consider this linguistic decision to be grammatically incorrect, but the fact that this value is included in the dictionary makes the neologism "they" a universally recognized linguistic phenomenon. Accordingly, society will have to take this fact into account both at the intraand ex- tra-linguistic level, regardless of whether you are a advocate or critic of the phenomenon under discussion.

In addition to they, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary publishers include a number of neologisms to this group, which relate to a complex set of issues of self-determination in the world and the problems associated with this. For instance:

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C o l o r i s m : prejudice or discrimination especially within a racial or ethnic group favoring people with lighter skin over those with darker skin [1**].

I n c l u s i v e : A new sense has been added: “allowing and accommodating people who have historically been excluded (as because of their race, gender, sexuality, or ability)”

[1**].

The neologisms of Top surgery and Bottom surgery were also included in the MerriamWebster dictionary in 2019, again emphasizing the accent of American society on complicated social phenomena, which historians have to admit to the more traditional views.

2. Politics and law

The second position in the production of neologisms is occupied by the political sphere, which is expected in the context of complex interand intrastate relations in recent years. Here one can cite such neologisms as:

D e e p s t a t e : an alleged secret governmental network operating extralegally [1**].

R e d f l a g l a w : a law allowing courts to prevent people who show signs of being a danger to themselves or others from having access to firearms. It has only been in use since 2015, and its synonym, e x t r e m e r i s k l a w , dates to 2017 [1**].

3. Digital technologies: computer, Internet, social networks

Modern technologies evolve at maximum speed, which cannot but affect the lexical level of the language. The development of technology today introduces more new words into the language dictionary than several other thematic groups of neologisms combined. The peculiarity of the technical neological dictionary of 2019 is as follows: we do not so much name devices and programs as we talk about what a person does with them and what they do for a person. For instance:

h a p t i c s : the use of electronically or mechanically generated movement that a user experiences through the sense of touch as part of an interface (as on a gaming console or smartphone) [1**].

p r e d i c t i v e t e x t : based on or generated by using methods of prediction, has changed the way that we send messages [1**].

4. Abbreviations and contractions

Fourth place belongs to speech economy and humor. The word game is part of the language, and some informal words in this group are inventive neologisms-truncations, recombinations and contraction of words. For instance:

V a c a y : a shortening of vacation [1**]. S e s h : a shortening of session [1**].

I n s p o : a shortening of inspiration [1**].

F a b u l o s i t y : fabulous quality, state, or nature [1**].

F a t b e r g : a large mass of fat and solid waste that collects in a sewer system (a portmanteau of fat and iceberg) [1**].

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5. Games and sports

A healthy lifestyle, a sporty slim body, active leisure activities are trends that have gained their strong position among the life priorities of a man of today. For instance:

E s c a p e r o o m : a game in which participants confined to a room or other enclosed setting are given a set amount of time to find a way to escape [1**].

F r e e s o l o : a climb in which a rock climber uses no artificial aids for support and has no rope or other safety equipment for protection in case of a fall [1**].

A person wants to meet high standards (sometimes artificial and imposed, but this makes them no less desirable) in order to feel at a comfortable psychological level. Social networks (an important and significant branch of the development of digital technologies discussed above) play an important role here. But sports in its purest form - as an activity that brings high achievements, income and satisfaction - also becomes a sphere where new words are actively gaining their place in the dictionary.

6. Pop culture

This area turned out to be very productive on the realia-neologisms. For instance:

C o u l r o p h o b i a : meaning “abnormal fear of clowns.” Although Hollywood releases and dictionary updates are not coordinated, this entry hits your screens within weeks of the premieres of both It Chapter Two and Joker [1**].

or:

B e c h d e l t e s t : refers to a set of criteria used to evaluate a movie or other work of fiction on the basis of its inclusion and representation of female characters [1**].

The specificity of the field of popular culture is such that the involvement of a large number of people in it stimulates the active use and rapid dissemination of new words and their new meanings. As we said above, the main criterion for including a word into the Merriam-

Webster dictionary is “frequent use, widespread use, and meaningful use” [1 **], and sometimes it took years for the publisher of the dictionary to determine how often and widely used the word is. But pop culture is a special area where large-scale involvement is the main parameter, which means that what is in demand in pop culture gets stable, steady rotation as a result. So, from the moment a word from this sphere appears in speech to the moment it is included into the dictionary, a year or less may pass.

7. Business and finance

The development of business methods and descriptions of business brings new business and economic realias, including:

G i g e c o n o m y : (coined in 2009) economic activity that involves the use of temporary or freelance workers to perform jobs typically in the service sector [1**].

P a i n p o i n t : a persistent or recurring problem (as with a product or service) that frequently inconveniences or annoys customers [1**].

8. Science and medicine

Neologisms are often generated in those areas of knowledge where they make scientific discoveries, study new processes, and develop scientific theories. Taking into account the speed

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nation with the suffixes of the translating language. This method is most often used in the translation of neologisms from English into Russian. For instance:

crowdfunding - краудфандинг; steampunk - стимпанк;

selfie – селфи.

2. Creation of a new word or phrase to denote this neologism based on elements already existing in the translating language. This type of translation is also called a functional replacement method. For instance:

gamification – игрофикация; Bioabsorbableбиоабсорбирующий.

3. The use of a word denoting something close (although not identical) in function to a foreign language neologism, in other words, assimilating translation. For instance

social networking - социальная тусовка; Escape roomквест;

big data - большие данные.

4. A hyponymic or generalized approximate translation, in which the words of the original language, denoting a specific concept, are transmitted by the word of the translating language, which names the root concept of this neologism. It is the most rare type of translation of realias-neologisms today. For instance:

Seshвечеринка;

Coulrophobia – боязнь клоунов.

Despite the fact that the described methods of translating realias make it possible to more or less accurately retain the meaning of neologism from English to Russian, it is difficult to deny that even with a successful choice of the method of translation, the formation of a lacuna in the text of the translating language cannot be excluded. Since the formation of a lacuna is a negative phenomenon in translation, the delacunisation process (a relatively new area that is of interest to scientific translators today [4, 5]) is the area of translation science that has yet to help practicing translators achieve maximum equivalence and adequacy between original and translation texts.

Conclusion

The emergence of realias-neologisms in such areas as digital technologies, the social sphere, economics, politics, science or mass culture is quite justified and explainable - they reflect the movement of society forward, demonstrate new trends and development. Linguistic dictionaries are annually updated with new words and meanings, and so far today there has been an increase in the number of new words that still have to get into them. Language lives its own life, and lexicographers and publishers have only to fix changes and add new meanings to familiar words. Today it is not uncommon that the specialized term of a narrow scientific field is suddenly gaining mass acknowledgement, thereby attracting the attention of linguists and, of course, dictionary compilers. The most popular search queries on the Internet also become the object of study of linguists, these words become trends, stimulate new directions and vectors of the development of linguistic science.

The inclusion of new articles into the dictionary (as in the case of the Merriam-Webster dictionary) is an opportunity to take stock of how our language develops, an occasion to learn

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more about new language inclusions and analyze patterns and trends - both internally and nonlinguistically.

The problem of translating realias-neologisms is very relevant today, because, as analysis has shown, the most commonly used methods of translating such realias are transliteration and transcription are the type of lexical unit translation that forms a large number of lacunae in the translation text, which does not contribute to achieving equivalence as the main indicator of translation quality.

References

[1]Vlahov S. Neperevodimoe v perevode / S. Vlahov, S. Florin. - Izd. 3-e, ispr. i dop. - M., 2006. - 448 s.

[2]Fenenko N. A. Dve strategii perevoda realij / N. A. Fenenko // Vestnik Voronezhskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Ser. Lingvistika i mezhkul'turnaja kommunikacija. - Voronezh, 2009. -№ 1. -S. 121-128.

[3]Fedorov A. V. Osnovy obshhej teorii perevoda (lingvisticheskie problemy): ucheb. posobie dlja in-tov i fak. inostr. jazykov / A. V. Fedorov. - 5-e izd. - SPb.; M., 2002. - 416 s.

[4]Bulgakova S. Ju. K probleme klassifikacii tekstovyh lakun / S.Ju. Bulgakova // Nauchnyj vestnik Voronezh. gos. arh.-stroit. un-ta. Sovremennye lingvisticheskie i metodikodidakticheskie issledovanija. 2013. - vyp. (20). - S. 166-176.

[5]Kozlova V.V. Metatekst kak sredstvo zapolnenija lakun / V.V. Kozlova // Nauchnyj vestnik Voronezh. gos. arh.-stroit. un-ta. Sovremennye lingvisticheskie i metodikodidakticheskie issledovanija. – 2015. – vyp.3 (27). – S. 151-164.

Dictionaries used

[1**] Portal slovarja Merriam-Webster [Jelektronnyj resurs]. – URL: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/new-words-in-the-dictionary - (vremja obrashhenija 24. 11. 2019).

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SCIENTIFIC OVERVIEW

Review of the monograph:

Varečková L. “Towards the Need to Learn Languages in Social Sphere”. Vysoká škola technická a ekonomická v Českých Budéjovicích, České Budéjovice, Česká republika,

2018. – 130 p. ISBN 978-80-7468-133-2

With globalization and in-Europe migration ongoing the number of social requirements and needs to be met is also on the increase. This brings up a necessity to execute new solutions in social sphere adequate for the multicultural environment, which leads to growing job requirements among social workers dealing with foreigners and migrants. Hence, the studies in the field of teaching foreign languages among social sphere specialists appear to be of immense topicality.

“Towards the need to learn languages in social sphere” by PhDr. L’ubica Varečková is an invigorating contribution to language methodology studies and a worthy impact to linguistic education in particular. The ideas and experiences analysed in this monograph will appeal to anyone interested in the current trends in foreign language teaching and learning, particularly educationalists. The best practices in FLT that the book offers will be a source of inspiration for in-service teachers and course designers, while the theoretical backgrounds provided in each chapter will be valuable to pre-service teachers and stimulating to researchers. Moreover, the monograph can be used as a didactic material for university and college educational programmes.

The book addresses the essential facets of foreign language teaching in modern Europe. It covers the key considerations concerning the language teaching techniques and documents underlying language teaching. The empirical data is based on the EU and Slovak legislative and educational documents – Europe 2020 Strategy, Common European Framework of Reference, European Quality Framework, Languages for Jobs, Act No 448/2008, Act No 461/2003, Act No 568/2009, Act No 131/202, Act No 245/2008, etc.

In a concise yet comprehensive manner, the author approaches the research subject matter from the point of view of methodology analyzing the English-Slovak language teaching techniques. The suggested synergetic treatment of modern teaching strategies gives a complex picture of the specificity of EU language teaching and opens up new vistas for even deeper probes into the role of languages in social sphere. In order to highlight and specify the importance of a foreign language as means of supranational communication in an intercultural setting the author resorts to both quantitative and qualitative methods, provides the results of interviewing respondents, fusing interpretation with analytical-deductive methods. The research outcomes, gained by the application of the methods mentioned above, answer the key research questions, which are explicitly formulated in Section 3.1 of the empirical chapter.

It cannot escape the reader’s attention that the book represents a good balance of theory and data. Having provided a comprehensive discussion of European language learning approaches, the author of the monograph suggests successful solutions for language learning problems, i.e. suggestion to include foreign language into the study programme profile, including social studies; improve implementation of European Commission’s recommendations on the development of educational sphere, etc., and highlights some ideas as to further research.

The author provides illustrative examples and lucid evidence of the highlighted phenomena at each point in a thorough and explicit fashion. Likewise, due attention is paid to the clarity of material presentation hence the volume’s organization makes it easy to find specific information. Moreover, accenting the text in various ways by using numbering, enlarged font size, italics, charts and so on makes the collection look clear and neat.

The composition of the monograph is perfectly balanced. The book consists of three chapters. There is a detailed table of contents, a list of tables and charts, which support the au-

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thor’s observations and discussion of the results. There is a list of abbreviations and symbols, too.

Chapter 1 provides an intriguing insight into the contemporary state of knowledge in the given research area as well as overall publication methodology including a whole range of research questions. Among them is the fact that there has yet been no book-scale research of the language teaching technique in the social sphere education in Slovak as well as a necessity to systematize the present studies and create a roadmap of the theories and rules.

The discussion included in Chapter 2, being essentially theoretical, revolves around the principles of foreign language teaching approached in terms of modern pedagogical strategies. The author provides convincing results of the methodological analysis of the European and Slovak language teaching principles. Thus, the author makes an intermediate conclusion that a new range of language teaching methods are needed for the social sphere specialists to eliminate the gap between their current obsolete study programme and the modern social sphere realia (Varečková L., p. 61).

Chapter 3 embraces a skillful analysis of students’ foreign language skills including their mutual contrasting. The author skillfully illustrates the specificities of language teaching strategies. L. Varečková not only highlights and compares the peculiarities of the statistical data, but also suggests a number of research hypotheses. Namely, the author claims that it is of crucial importance for the social sphere students to employ the resources in the foreign language when writing a thesis in it (Varečková L., p. 103). Successfully blending the theoretical data and practical results the author presents the actual quantitative analysis of students’ foreign language skills, based on the questionnaire of the respondents learning English, German and Russian.

The monograph ends up with a detailed and convincing review of the crucial results obtained and the main observations made in the course of the analysis. L’ubica Varečková is adamant that it is only through systematic provision of foreign language teaching at universities that students specializing in social sphere will be more prepared for changing multicultural work environment [Varečková L. p. 117].

With “Towards the need to learn languages in social sphere” L. Varečková has provided language researchers and educators with an invaluable tool, which will help to navigate in foreign language teaching procedures within the university environment with the emphasis of teaching English for specific purposes. One must give a special credit to the author for the quality of the language, precise and clear style of the book and editorial management.

To conclude this review, the claim can be made that the publication will definitely provide a perfect referential source for scholars and pedagogues specializing in foreign language teaching as well as for linguists, students, and public at large interested in the issue of foreign language teaching at the university level.

Olga L. Byessonova

Doctor of Philology, Professor

Professor of the British and American Studies Department,

University of St. Cyril and Methodius University in Trnava (Slovakia)

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