SLENGO, KAIP SOCIALINĖS REALIJOS, VERTIMO YPATUMAI
TRANSLATION OF SLANG AS SOCIAL REALIA

Summary/Abstract: Having embarked on the concept of slang as social realia, the author proceeds with the hypothesis that defining slang functions in a speech act might reveal the skopos of the text. The idea that translating and interpreting should primarily take into account the purpose of both the source and target text comes from the so called skopostheorie attributed to Hans Vermeer and developed by a number of German researchers. It is not the functional equivalent of translation that a translator should be concerned with but the purpose of the translation project at large. The text under analysis has revealed that slang serves as a powerful means of identifying people as members of a group; reinforcing social identity; appealing to the audience’s imagination. But first and foremost the slang supports the purpose of the speech act: when the slang is eliminated from the text, the profile of the speaker and the audience becomes blurred, loses its sharpness, thus the purpose of the speech is distorted or lost. This is especially true about inclusions of another language slang (e.g. Spanglish). As soon as those instances are eliminated, changed or otherwise ignored by the translator the purpose of the target text is distorted as well. To prove the above said, a quantitative and a qualitative test was carried out with the assistance of ten young and enthusiastic translators and a small group of experts.

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