FEATURES OF TRANSLATING LEXICAL MEANS OF EXPRESSIVENESS (BASED ON SALLY ROONEY’S NOVEL “NORMAL PEOPLE”)

Abstract

The article deals with lexical means of expressiveness as one of the key components of the idiostyle of contemporary fiction and the peculiarities of their reproduction in Ukrainian literary translation. Attention is focused on the translation transformations applied when rendering the expressively marked vocabulary of the English-language original into the target language. The material comprises fragments of the novel Normal People (2018) by the Irish writer Sally Rooney and its Ukrainian translation (2020) by Anastasiia Konyk. A comprehensive analysis of the lexical means of expressiveness realized in the original text has been carried out, and the translation transformations applied to reproduce them in Ukrainian have been highlighted. Certain stylistic devices that reinforce the expressive effect of the units under study are also mentioned. The study employs the continuous sampling method, comparative-translational analysis, and transformational analysis, which helped not only identify and systematize the linguistic phenomena under study but also compare the substantive and functional nature of the translation transformations. The analysis has shown that the expressiveness of Sally Rooney’s literary language is created primarily through colloquial and slang vocabulary, emotionally evaluative lexemes, and stylistic devices. In doing so, the translator resorts to different transformations depending on the type of expressive unit and the context of its use. Among the most productive transformations identified are modulation, specification, generalization, compression, and decompression, as well as instances of grammatical shifts and compensatory intensification of expressiveness by means of the target language. Within the framework of these transformations, the following lexical means of expressiveness were recorded: colloquial slang, emotionally evaluative vocabulary, metaphor, antithesis, simile, lexical repetition, and intensifiers. These means served to reveal the characters’ psychological states, social status, and age-specific speech patterns in particular, and to shape the author’s idiostyle in general.