More on the classification of linguistic phenomena of asymmetry (evidence from the russian and english languages)

The article deals with the phenomenon of linguistic asymmetry that involves the erroneous translation of the linguistic units of a source language due to their phonetic similarity with the units of a translation language. The author addresses the problem of similarity and near-identity using the analysis of several typologies developed by the scientists. The author has worked out the classification which includes: the words that have no identical dictionary meanings; interlingual paronyms - the words that are different both in form and meaning, but often identified; interlingual synonyms and functional misleading words. When translating the words relating to the group of formal misleading words like «jellyfish» (медуза), «ladybird BE» or «ladybug AE» (божья коровка), the translation error occurs due to the combined process including both the equivalent translation and onomatopoeia. Therefore, onomatopoeia is not the only cause of the process of misinterpretation. The differences between the interlingual synonyms under analysis let us develop the typology based on the differences in the conceptual content according to the plane of content and to the plane of expression. According to the plane of content, we can highlight the following features of the interlingual synonyms: both similarity and difference in meanings; generic meanings in one language but specific in the other language; differences relating to culture-specific concepts; differences in stylistic characteristics; differences in lexical combinability. According to the plane of expression, they can be both similar and different in their extensions. The last group consists in the words with different meanings. However, they belong to the same semantic field. These functional misleading words clearly show the following logical-semantic relations: a causal connection; similar sizes, similar functioning, similar manufacturing processes and so on. In the end, the author presents the typology using various illustrative materials.

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