SPECIFIC FEATURES OF THE POLITICAL NON- EQUIVALENT LANGUAGE UNITS’ TRANSLATION IN THE MEDIA DISCOURSE (BASED ON THE MATERIAL OF THE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLES)

Abstract

The article examines the issues of the non-equivalent vocabulary translation in the sphere of English political media discourse. Today, due to the processes of globalization and the expansion of the media space, the issues of translation of the non-equivalent language units in different spheres, including lexical units in the sphere of media discourse, become more and more relevant. Because of the rapid development of political relations between countries, new words appear in the media that may not have their exact equivalents in the target language, which becomes one of the most challenging tasks not only for the translator, but also for translation studies, lexicology, intercultural communication and other linguistic disciplines as a whole. The aim of this article is to consider the main problems and ways of translating the non-equivalent vocabulary of modern political topics, to analyze the linguistic and cultural characteristics of the translation of the non-equivalent vocabulary in the media discourse, and to draw conclusions about which translation techniques are the most common and adequate when translating the non-equivalent lexical units in the social and political texts of the media discourse. In order to achieve the aim in the article we have reviewed the existing classifications of the elements of the field of the non-equivalent vocabulary, provided the basic research terms, as well as analyzed the translation techniques, typical for the political texts of mass-media discourse. Having carried out a comprehensive analysis of the studied material, it is noted that if the lexical unit of a media discourse text belongs to the field of non-equivalent lexical units, the ways and the adequacy of its rendering is determined not only by lexical and grammatical transformations, but also by extralinguistic knowledge and the translator’s cultural grasp; the most difficult lexical elements for translation are political terms, jargon and emotive-evaluation vocabulary, the rendering of which is often determined by pragmatic aspect of the translation; the most common and adequate translation techniques were semantic development, compensation, descriptive translation, and contextual transposition.

Keywords

• non-equivalent language units
• political discourse
• political text
• media discourse
• mass-media articles