The nonce word as a product of individual word creation: boundaries of translatability

There are essentially two approaches to the question of the boundaries of translatability. The former claims that translation is impossible as each language interprets reality in its own way and each linguistic community perceives the world in its own particular way. The latter approaches untranslat-ability as a more specific problem - the one which arises due to the existence of certain "gaps" between the source language (SL) and the target language (TL), but is somehow solved in each case. The article discusses a particular case of untranslatability - the rendering of the SL nonce words (or occasional words). They are created ad hoc and characterized by the entirety of the conventional and the individual, the stereotype and creativity as well as the author's linguistic and extralinguistic background. Nonce words do not have fixed translation equivalents, thus forcing the translator to make a specific translation decision each time s/he encounters a nonce word in the SL text. The translation decision depends on the understanding of the SL text, which, in the case of nonce words, can be a challenge for the translator. The context helps to overcome the problem of understanding but the context only is not enough when the text is "linguistically preconditioned". An example of a linguistically preconditioned text is Ulysses written by J. Joyce. We argue that it is the world building pattern (model) that fosters the understanding of the SL nonce words and helps the translator to make a translation decision. The statistical analysis shows that J. Joyce's nonce words are mainly formed by conventional word buildings patterns, with composition being the most frequently used model (61 %) and affixation and conversion being used less often (16 <% and 3 <% respectively). The comparative analysis of J. Joyce's nonce lexis and its Russian and German translation equivalents demonstrates that the translators tend to use the replication of the word building pattern as a prevalent translation method (70 %o and 50 % for German and Russian translations respectively). Transliteration/transcription (16 % and 7 % for German and Russian translations respectively), omission (1 % and 3 %) and transformation (3 % and 18 %) as well as the usage of conventional TL lexis (10 % and 25 %) are the methods which are less regularly used to render J. Joyce's nonce words. This data indicates that the German language is more likely to allow the translator to replicate the form of an English nonce word. It results from the close genetic relationship between English and German. Overall, the research findings indicate that even intrinsically "untranslatable" units (such as nonce words) can be translated. Yet, the problem of translatability cannot be fully solved as nonce words have neither a conventional form nor a conventional meaning.

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