Corpus-based Comparative Study of Non-equivalence in Russian and German

This article conceptuaizes the controversial issues of studying non-equivalent vocabulary and highlights the specifics of the phenomenon of lexical non-equivalent in Russian to German language pair. The first part of the article highlights the relevance of the study of the problem, as well as general and specific controversial issues for this language pair, which are related to recognition of non-equivalent lexical units. Interpretation of this term, volume and content of the concept are analyzed. The second part of the article is devoted to typological differences that lead to establishment of non-equivalent relations in this language pair. The author suggests a methodology of comparative study of vocabulary of the two languages with the purpose of selection of untranslatables. This part describes the case of the dictionaries for the systematic mapping of the Russian words against the background of the German language. The principle of selection of the dictionaries of the source language, the concept of which is based on the system organization of vocabulary, and the most authoritative bilingual translation dictionaries is substantiated. The third part presents the results of the system analysis of the vocabulary of the two languages and the corpus of Russian-German untranslatables. For the system analysis of Russian untranslatables against the background of the German language, the part-of-speech classification was used, taking into account the typological specificity of the two languages and the nature of untranslatables. In addition to the four basic parts of speech (nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs), this classification also includes structural words of the Russian language: prepositions, conjunctions, particles, interjections, introductory words, pronouns, numerals. The method of allocation of untranslatables is presented. According to the method of fixation in the dictionary, the untranslatables are divided into absolute (not fixed in bilingual dictionaries) and relative (fixed by dictionaries, but transmitted approximately: through a description, interpretation, a number of close analogues, using words with a narrower or wider meaning). As Russian and Russian-German dictionaries were analyzed, more than 10 000 absolute untranslatables of different types were selected. The analysis of bilingual dictionaries showed that relative untranslatables are supplied with special labels. Each type is described and illustrated with examples. In conclusion, the author outlines promising directions for the study of the phenomenon of non-equivalence.

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