Ways of conveying the lexical meaning of genuine internationalisms

From what has been pointed out concerning the nature and componental structure of genuine internationalisms becomes clear, that a faithful rendering of their lexical meaning often requires consid­erable attention on the part of translators. At any rate, in the process of their translation several factors have to be taken into consideration both at language level and at speech level. These factors imply the lingual form, the lexical meaning, the structure, the source of origin and the orthographic presentation of internationalisms in both the lan­guages. As a result, expresing of meaning of some internationalisms may not always be termed «translation» proper, since it is a regular and complete transplantation of the source language units to the tar­get language (cf. atom атом, plan план, professor професор, alge­bra алґебра, poet поет, etc). Besides, translating of international lexemes may sometimes depend on the established model stereo­type according to which they are generally adopted in the target lan­guage. Taking into account various peculiarities of meaning and form of international lexemes, several ways of conveying their meaning can be suggested.

1. Literal Translating of Genuine Internationalisms.It should be pointed out that the lingual form of all componental parts in genu­ine international words and phrases is more often completely trans­planted, when they originate from languages, whose orthographic sys­tems have been arranged on phonetical principles. Hence, the au­thenticity of literal translating from languages as Latin, Greek, Italian, Ukrainian, partly Russian and Spanish will be always higher than that from the English or French languages, whose orthographic systems are based on the historical and etymological principles. It does not mean, however, that a less exact literal transplantation should be re­garded as less faithful or inferior. Any of them is faithful enough when it conveys the form and meaning of internationalisms. In this view literal translating of genuine internationalisms should not be regarded as a mechanical substitution of each letter of the source language lexeme for a corresponding letter of the target language. In many a case a letter may be dropped or added (substituted for another) in the target language when it is not in full conformity with its sound or spell­ing systems. Nevertheless, there are many letter-to-letter transliter­ated genuine internationalisms in English and Ukrainian. Latin:an­gina анґіна, dentist дантист, symposium симпозіум, gladiator

гладіатор, microscope мікроскоп, rector ректор; Greek:poet поет, micron мікрон, electron електрон, stadium стадіон, drama драма, theatre театр; Italian:macaroni макарони, pizza піцца, concerto концерт, duet дует, solo соло; Spanish:armada армада, tango танґо, El Dorado ельдорадо, embargo ембарго, etc.

It would be wrong to assume that genuine internationalisms from other than the above-mentioned languages can not be fully or almost fully transliterated. Literal translating can faithfully convey the lexical meaning of many English, French, German and also other than European by origin lexemes: English:bulldog бульдог¹, club клуб, mister містер, shelf шельф, shilling шилінг¹, shrapnel шрапнель; French:chef шеф, festival фестиваль, chiffon шифон, franc франк; Germ.:Diktat диктат, Deutsche Магкдойч марк; Portugese:cobra кобра, flamingo фламінго; Czech:robot робот; Hindi:brahmin брамін, khaki хакі, sari сарі; Japanese:kimono кімоно, tsunami цунамі; Arabic:algebra алґебра, atlas атлас, harem гарем; Afri­can:banana банан, baobab баобаб, zebra зебра; Australian ab­original:dingo дінґо, kiwi ківі, etc.

Literal translation of some of these and other genuine internationalisms may not be fully trusted, perhaps, as it has been performed not directly from the original languages but through En­glish, which is an intermediary language here. The existence of literal forms of genuine internationalisms from these languages, however, is beyond any doubt like those from Ukrainian (cf. steppe, Cossack/ Kozak, hryvnia); or Russian (balalaika, samovar, vodka, etc.). Never­theless, in many genuine internationalisms there is no absolute lit­eral/orthographic coincidence in the source language and in the tar­get language: basin басейн, monsoon мусон, waltz вальс, wine вино, salt сіль, степ steppe, devil диявол, muscle мускул, etc.

These divergences in the literal rendering are to be explained either by the influence of the intermediary languages or by the peculiar­ity of the target language admitting or not admitting the source lan­guage orthographic representation (cf. brahmin брамін, class клас, diet дієта, molecule молекула, etc.) or foreign signs by the target language.