English-Based Coronavirus-Neologisms in Media Texts and Peculiarities of their Reproduction in the Ukrainian Translation

Abstract

Abstract. The aim of the article is to study the peculiarities of the neologisms reproduction related to COVID-19 in English media texts in the Ukrainian translations. To achieve this goal, the following tasks were set out: to define the concept of neologism in modern linguistics; to identify the ways of translating neologisms in modern translation studies; to investigate the use and peculiarities of neologism reproduction related to COVID-19 in English media texts into Ukrainian. The problem of neologisms in the English language is studied by a number of linguists and translation studies scholars, such as L. Barkhudarov,        V. Karaban, V. Komissarov, O. Selivanova, O. Bondarenko, Yu. Zhluktenko, O. Cherednychenko, N. Bilous, N. Novokhatskaya, A. Pogorila, O. Tymchuk. Analysis of recent researches has shown that the rapid enrichment of the English language with new words requires special attention to methods of translating neologisms, as well as the compiling of English-Ukrainian dictionaries of neologisms.

Methods. During the study, the method of linguistic observation and description, the method of comparison, the method of continuous sampling, translation analysis were used.

Results. The study focuses on neologisms related to coronavirus infection in media texts. The article discusses the main ways of translating English neologisms, newly COVID-19-related abbreviations and terms. The special attention is focused on neologisms rendering existing in the theory of translation studies, such as transliteration, transcription, transcoding, loan translation, appropriate analogue, descriptive translation, direct borrowing. The current study of neology in foreign and Ukrainian linguistics and translation studies was also under consideration. In recent years, an increasing number of linguists and translators have shown a particular interest in the study of new units’ formation, classification in language and their reproduction in translation. The authors of the article analyze the most productive ways of translating Сovid-related neologisms from English into Ukrainian.

Conclusions. It can be concluded that translators apply different ways in translating neologisms from one language into another one. The findings showed that transcoding, transcription and transliteration, selection of analogue, explication and combination of two methods of translation are among the most frequently used procedures in conveying neologisms related to COVID-19. Moreover, the most common ways of translating neologisms-abbreviations are calquing or selection of an analogue. The analysis also showed that the most common methods of translating neologism-terms related to coronavirus pandemic are direct translation equivalent, calquing and descriptive translation.