Russian journal of linguistics: Vestnik RUDN (Dec 2016)
Lexical and Semantic Fields Judge and Sudya in the English and Russian Languages
Abstract
Due to the expansion of international cooperation in economy, policy and other spheres the problem of terminology translation and search for terminological equivalency in source texts and target texts is among the most important ones (Sonneveld, Loening, 1993; Hjort-Pedersen, Faber, 2001; Blomquist, 2006 and others). The solution to these problems is impossible without a comparative study. This research is carried out within a framework of the comparative terminology studies (Tsitkina, 1988; Leycik, 1990; Nekrassova, 2013 and others) and is a continuation of the analyses of the Russian and English lexemes denoting the core legal professions and their translation correspondences. Earlier we have already analyzed the Russian and English terms comprising the lexical and semantic fields of ‘advokat’ and ‘prokuror’ (Ozyumenko, 2014; Ozyumenko, Chilingaryan, 2015; Chilingaryan, Larina, Ozyumenko, 2016 and others). The aim of the present article is to compare lexical and semantic fields ‘judge’ and ‘sydya’ in order to find out their similarities and differences and to search for translation equivalents of their constituent elements. In the article I will compare the quantity of the lexemes, their semantic volume and analyse their differentiating features. The object of the research was the lexical units containing the semantic element of ‘an official, executing justice’. The data were taken from Russian and English definition dictionaries, specialized dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, legal texts, media, British National Corpus (BNC), Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and Russian National Corpus (RNC). The study implemented definitive, distributive, context, contrastive and cultural analyses. These methods enabled to specify the semantics of the terms, their culture specific features and to offer some recommendations on their translation. The comparative analyses revealed some considerable difficulties in nominating officials executing justice. They are of quantitative and qualitative nature and besides language reasons are caused by differences between Russian and Common law systems. The analysis showed that the English lexical and semantic field is represented by a greater number of lexemes than the Russian one, i.e. it has higher nominative density (term by V. Karasik [Karasik, 2002:133]). English and Russian terms differ by volume of their meaning and differential signs. English terms are characterized by nominative specification, territorial variation and polysemy. The revealed differences create considerable difficulties while translating. The results of the research can be used in comparative terminology studies, in theory and practice of translation, in dictionary making and in teaching professional English to law students.
