Equivalence in Ukrainian-English translation of institutional academic terminology

Abstract

The article looks into the issue of translation equivalence based on semantic and pragmatic approaches to specialised terminology as used in institutional academic settings. The relations of full, near and partial equivalence and no-equivalence were analysed for pairs of Ukrainian and English terms and semi-terms selected from texts on Ukrainian university sites, representing examples of Ukrainian translation from English. Parallels were made with specialised English institutional terminology used on original British university sites. The material analysed demonstrated a low degree of homogeneity of the two terminological systems resulting from different approaches to understanding the objectives of university tuition, its principles and procedures. Conclusions were drawn as to the translator’s success or failure in achieving equivalence, which was shown to depend on taking into account a number of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. The importance of semantic structure analysis of terminology in both languages was demonstrated to facilitate the avoidance of translation failures, the task being unduly complex given the absence of comprehensive specialised bilingual dictionaries.