(Un)translatability revisited:

transmetic and intertextual puns in Viktor Pelevin’s Generation “P” and its translations

Author(s): Roman Ivashkiv / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

Babylen Tatarsky, the protagonist in Russian writer Viktor Pelevin’s novel Generation “P”(translated into English by Andrew Bromfield as Homo Zapiens), works to adapt Americanadvertisements for the Russian market and witnesses how the reality of Russia’s tumultuous1990s is replaced by a consumer-driven television simulation. Puns in the advertising slogansthat Tatarsky translates, interspersed throughout the novel, are central to its plot. Some of thesepuns exhibit greater sophistication than others: in addition to utilizing homonymy, homophony,homography, paronymy, and polysemy, they involve transmesis, multilingualism, andintertextuality. This article compares how Pelevin’s translators (English, German, Polish,Spanish, and French) approached these difficult puns. The objective of this comparative analysisis to demonstrate how the intertext(s) evoked through wordplay may, on the one hand, impedetranslation, but, on the other, open avenues for creative solutions, by producing new traces andechoes of meaning that make the act of translation possible. The issues raised by the varioustranslations point to a need to re-examine the roles and tasks of the translator and underscorethe importance of keeping the (un)translatability debate open. Ultimately, this article aims tocontribute to the ongoing reconceptualization of what literary translation is and, especially,what it does: with texts, readers, literatures, and, above all, with language.

(Не)познатият език: Гергьовден при бесарабските българи

Author(s): Svetlana Georgieva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2019

Folk-calendar terminology is an expression of the national specificity of cultures. This makes its studying promising within the framework of the tendencies for ‘European-style thinking’ which have emerged since the beginning of the 21st century. The article examines St. George’s Day customs and rituals in their ethnolinguistic aspect. G’erg’ewd’en (Vch, Cub, Chsh), G’ergyovd’en (A, G, Kam, Dl, Z), G’ergyochd’en (A) , G’ergyouud’en(Kr), Gyorguvd’en (Kul), Gyorguud’en (R), Gerg’ofden (Cyr), G’argyovd’an (DN), Gergiuden (Or) – the largest and richest – in a ritual sense – spring religious vestive-ritual complex of the Bessarabian Bulgarians, which is celebrated on the 6th of May (on the 23rd of April old style) and is dedicated to the Christian saint George, who is – in the folk tradition – the protector of shepherds and flocks. The paper attempts to systematize and explore the peculiarities of the cultural dialect associated with St. George’s Day ritual sequence.

<Pouvoir d’achat>, <épargne> et <inflation>. Analyse conceptuelle sur objectif de terminologie bilingue français-roumain

Author(s): Maria Ciupăgeanu,Anca Dincă / Language(s): French Issue: 5/2016

We aim in this paper to provide a description of the (more or less explicit) conceptual system that underlies a specific French for business online thematic resource of the CCIP, by Joëlle Bonenfant and Jean Lacroix. This conceptual analysis is supposed to support a bilingual French-Romanian terminological project, of which we only elaborate here three thematic fields, namely <purchasing power>, <savings> and <inflation>. The Romanian terms are chosen according to the relation between concepts designated by the French and the Romanian items respectively (the so called crochet terminologique belongs to the conceptual, not to the linguistic side), given the translation type at hand (instrumental source-culture oriented translation, that forbids both adaptations and intercultural equivalences).

1883–1916 m. katekizmai ir jų religijos terminų reikšminės grupės

Author(s): Aušra Rimkutė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 15/2008

The catechism is a very important literary form of the Church. It teaches the basics of Christianity, its moral and ethic norms, which make the foundation for the life of a Christian. During the period of thirty three years (between 1883 and 1916) there were 86 Catholic and 11 Protestant (9 Lutheran and 2 Calvinist) catechisms published. During the period when printing in Lithuanian was prohibited catechisms were published outside the borders of Lithuania Major. Catechisms are mainly aimed at teaching children and youth, therefore they had an important role as primers in Lithuanian and as educators of the native language. According to A. Jakštas, “nearly every well-known catechist took care to prepare his own catechism. Thus the number of catechisms grew with every year; there were a lot of them written and published – each one in its own particular method, particular terminology and particular plan” (Jakštas 1923: 239). Furthermore it is obvious that compilers of catechisms had a need to explain terms of non Lithuanian origin (mostly international words). Most frequently such terms were explained using the Lithuanian equivalent – sometimes more, sometimes less successful. Variants of terms were abundant.In this article terms of religion are considered to be words and combinations of words, which name the supernatural (angelas (angel), Dievas (God), Dvasia (Spirit), velnias (devil)), rites (atnašavimas (sacrifice), mišios (Mass), pamaldos (service), pamokslas (sermon), procesija (procession)), actions related to religion (atgaila (penance), išganymas (salvation), išpažintis (confession)), Church celebrations (Sekminės (Whit Sunday), Velykos (Easter)), names of objects (grabas (coffin), kielikas (chalice), ostija (host), patena (paten)), moral principles of the Christian life, behaviour to be avoided or to be followed (atgailos atlikimas (execution of penance), gailestis už griekus (repentance of sins), išmalda (pittance), malda (prayer), tikėjimas (faith)), religious books and texts (Biblija (Bible), Evangelija (Gospel)), sacraments (Krikštas (Baptism), Kunigystė (Holy Orders), Moterystė (Matrimony), Paskutinis Patepimas (Anointing of the Sick)), sins and their kinds (apsirijimas (gluttony), godulystė (greed), vagystė (stealing), žmogžudystė (killing)) and names of persons (apaštalas (apostle), eretikas (heretic), išganytojas (Saviour), popiežius (Pope), vyskupas (bishop)) and other.

1883–1916 metų katekizmų religinių vietų pavadinimai

Author(s): Aušra Rimkutė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 19/2012

Names of places related to religion comprise about five percent of religious terminology used in catechisms published in 1883–1916. These words name various liturgical places important to believers such as buildings (bažnyčia (church), šventykla (church), katedra (cathedral)), their parts and spaces (altorius (altar), aukuras (altar), choras (choir), klausykla (confessional), koplyčia (chapel), sakykla (pulpit), zakristija (vestry)), places of burial (kapinės (cemetery), katakombos (catacombs)), afterlife (dangus (heaven), rojus (paradise)), miraculous or important religious events, for instance, visitations (dykynė (wilderness)), punishment or purification (pragaras (hell), skaistykla (purgatory)), and other places. According to their origin names of places related to religion used in catechisms published in 1883–1916 can be divided into Lithuanian (44 percent; aukuras (altar), dangus (heaven), pragaras (hell), klausykla (confessional), sakykla (pulpit), skaistykla (purgatory), šveitykla (purgatory), šventykla (church), vienuolynas (monastery), tėvainystė (heaven)), non-Lithuanian: a) international words (8 percent; altorius (altar), konfesionalas (confessional), presbiterija (presbitery)), b) old borrowings (12 percent; bažnyčia (church), koplyčia (chapel), rojus (paradise), zakristija (sacristy)), c) barbarisms (30 percent; atklanės (hell), pekla (hell), čysčius (purgatory), svietas (world)) and half- Lithuanian words (6 percent; altorėlis (altar), karalystė (kingdom), vyskupija (diocese)).

1910–1937 m. lietuviškoji statybos terminija (iš turimų išteklių)

Author(s): Robertas Stunžinas / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 14/2007

This article deals with analysis of Lithuanian endogenic and old loaned building terminology of the begining of XX century according to origin, structure and development aspects. Overall 1393 terms are analyzed, i. e. 806 one-word terms and 587 composite terms.Of all one-word terms terminologized (specialized) old lexis makes up about one fifth part: akmuo (stone) JodelNorm 2, namas (house) Zubausk 9, sija (beam) Kind 14. Metaphoric and metonymic terms in early building terminology are rather rare. The majority of metaphoric terms are the result of secondary metaphoric nomination: griaučiai (skeleton) Kind 8, grėblys (raker) Šimol 71, metonymic terms are originated according to specific terminology models: lenta (board) StatM 1923 I 8.Three quarters of analyzed one-word terms are derivations. The facts of Lithuanian language dictionary suggest that a large group of derivations could have been borrowed from the folk language: dūmtraukis (chimney) Kind 16. In many cases it is difficult to decide whether derivations are terminologized simple words or newly made. In particular this can be said about transpositional abstracts of verbs and adjectives: aušimas (cooling) Ekz 4, akytumas (porosity) Šimol 20. Only a small group of derivations could be suggested as neologisms. The majority of the neologisms are compound derivations: degplytė (baked brick) Janus 19. Derivations of suffixes and endings are rather rare: slugsnis (layer) StatM 1923 I 20, riša (bunch) Ekz 6.The major part of composite terms are made with the abstracts of verbs and adjectives: patvarumo bandymas (proof of sustainability) JodelTechn 146, atsparumas gniužimui (stability to crushing) JodelTechn 90 and terminologized simple words: dirbtinis akmuo (artificial stone) Iv 7.Most of the terms which are analyzed in this article are used at present. More than a half (56%) of one-word terms are found in modern term dictionaries of building: džiovykla (drying chamber) Iv 45, STŽ 134, kietėjimas (solidification) Šimol 84, STŽ 253, muštuvas (impact maschine) JodelTechn 191, STŽ 351. A significant part of terms are historisms and archaisms: akėčios (harrow) JodelTechn 66, bebras (beaver) StatM 1922 II 18; apsloginimas (reduction) JodelNorm 2, glostimas (smoothing) StatM 1923 I 11.

22nd Biennial Conference on Balkan and South Slavic Linguistics, Literature, and Folklore

Author(s): Helmut Wilhelm Schaller / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

A Corpus-Based Analysis Of The Complementation Patterns Of The Adjective “Ashamed”

Author(s): Temenuzhka Seizova-Nankova,Sylvia Dimitrova / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

The paper presents a corpus-based analysis of the predicative use of the adjective “ashamed” giving a full description of its complementation patterns with the help of the Valency Theory (VT – Herbst et al., 2004). The findings are based on a reference corpus extracted from the British National Corpus (BNC) by using the SkE software. The analysis reveals the advantages of the approach used for learners at levels B1 and B2 while, on the other hand, it shows the insufficiency of information found in the main English dictionaries (OALD, LDCE, etc.). It also demonstrates how both language learning and teaching, and materials production could be optimized using the corpus-based analysis.

A Cross-Cultural Study On White Colour Idioms In Turkish And English: Conceptual Metaphor Theory In Focus

Author(s): Gökçen Hastürkoğlu / Language(s): Turkish,English Issue: 1/2017

This study aims at investigating how similar and different the embodied cognition of Turkish and English speakers is by providing a systematic description of Turkish and English white colour idiomatic expressions and by analyzing them within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory through which the cognitive motivations behind the idiomatic expressions can be demonstrated. In order to do so, a large-scale corpus study based on specialized dictionaries on idioms in Turkish and English was carried out and a table was presented for each language illustrating the idiomatic expression, its meaning, its translation for the Turkish part, and the underlying conceptual metaphor or metonymy. After this cognitive analysis, it was revealed that despite some similarities in the cognitive mappings of the idioms in Turkish and English, the connotations of white colour idioms in two genetically unrelated languages vary because of cultural, historical, religious, or customary matters.

A Gender-Based Study Of Apology Speech Acts In British And Bulgarian Tv Series

Author(s): Deyana Peneva / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 1/2015

The major aim of this paper is to examine the way Bulgarian men and women apologize and investigate whether they exhibit differences with respect to the apologetic behavior they adopt in comparison to British male and female native speakers. The article focuses on the speech act of apologizing and it draws on two linguistic datasets for its analysis: six episodes from a British TV series Scott & Bailey and six episodes of comparable data from Glasshome, a Bulgarian TV series. Extracts of data containing apology speech acts in both corpora are compared qualitatively and quantitatively and the issues of apology strategy, type of offence, social status and social distance are discussed with respect to gender cultures and politeness.

A Jesuit Perspective on Metaphors for COVID-19 in the Online Journal “Thinking Faith”

Author(s): Truly Almendo Pasaribu,Novita Dewi,Barli Bram / Language(s): English Issue: 39(44)/2021

This article investigated how metaphors for COVID-19 were framed in a Catholic-based journal Thinking Faith. Data, consisting of 107 metaphors, were collected from the online journal and were analyzed within the Jesuit perspectives. Results showed that out of the 107 occurrences of metaphoric expressions for the pandemic, the source domains tend to have reflective and empowering aspects. The 12 main source domains of COVID-19 were war, drama, tools, natural forces, journey, manageable item, teacher, other living beings, darkness, pain, threat, and signs of the times. The coverage of Thinking Faith aimed to show the life-changing wisdom of the Gospel, Catholic Social Teaching, and Papal messages. Positive or neutral word choices of metaphors like teacher, drama, journey, manageable items, natural forces, and signs of the times managed to spark hopefulness for the journal readership. Meanwhile, the violence-related metaphors war, pain, and threat may appear to be discouraging. Overall, the metaphors used in the Jesuit online journal were contextually heartening.

A Lexicological Approach to Look-up Frequency of Turkish Sign Language Dictionary Users

Author(s): Erdem Önal,Bahtiyar Makaroğlu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

From a lexicography perspective, the phenomenon of dictionary lookup frequencies can answer many critical questions on the dictionary users’ needs and the relationship between corpus data and look-up tendencies. Although numerous studies have been carried out on the theoretical and functional aspects of look-up frequencies in the field of spoken language to date, there are relatively a few attempts to describe the characteristics of look-up behaviors in sign languages. This paper investigates the relationship between the objective frequency list of the Turkish Sign Language Corpus (Makaroğlu, 2021) and The Contemporary Turkish Sign Language Dictionary (Makaroğlu & Dikyuva, 2017) look-up occurrences. Using an approach to compare corpus data and log files, the results demonstrate that there are very limited similarities between the two and that there is no positive relationship for the percentage of the highest ranked items. In addition, the current study concludes that the corpus-based objective frequency list is a comparatively poor predictor of the dictionary look-up frequency and this difference could be direct result of the morphological structure of the words/signs in TİD (rather simultaneous realization) compared to Turkish (rather agglutinative morphology).

A Lost Lady: A Narrative of Manifest Destiny and Neocolonialism

Author(s): Ammar Aqeeli / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

The greatly examined story of A Lost Lady usually depicts Mrs. Forrester’s success in meeting and adapting to the challenges of a changing world, a world characterized by materialism and self-fulfilment. However, the overlooked story, one far more disturbing than the privileged story in the text, is the narrative of oppressed groups of people of other races and the lower class. Drawing on some aspects of postcolonial theory, this paper explores Willa Cather’s own reactions to real changes in her society, to the waning power of imperialism, and of her nostalgic longing for the western prairies of her youth, without showing any sympathy for the dispossessed Native Americans and other oppressed races. It will also disclose the unmistakable colonial overtones, which remarkably resonate with the common discourse of “Manifest Destiny” during the time period of American expansion to the Wild West.

A methodological approach in the comparative analysis of speech act patterns

Author(s): Deyana Peneva / Language(s): English Issue: 18/2018

The paper aims at investigating specific methodological practices for analysing and examining speech act structures in a comparative study (English and Bulgarian). It further focuses on the methodological nomenclature and the related research questions; the exact type of speech act and the respective performative verb characterizing the illocutionary utterance. In that respect the verb ‘accept’ and its relevant grammatical structures in English and Bulgarian were chosen to illustrate the different aspects in the proposed methodological model. The database is taken from BNC (British National Corpus) of spoken language and ten TV broadcasts of a popular Sunday programme (’The Day Starts with Georgi Lyubenov).

A multimodal analysis of conventional humorous structures on sensitive topics within rural communities in Romania

Author(s): Violeta Rus / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

When it comes to humour, performing humorous structures means not only producing amusement, but also implies the ability of perceiving the comical, ludicrous or absurd in human life. In this paper, I consider humour as a way in which people in the rural community express themselves freely, without boundaries or constraints. Therefore, the interest of the present article is to identify and analyse sensitive humorous topics in Romanian rural communities. In conducting the study, the following steps were taken: I videotaped people from the Upper Valley of the river Mureș (selected with sociolinguistic criteria such as gender, age, occupation), I transcribed the audio-video records and I divided the data into thematic categories: jokes, traditional shouts and funeral songs or dirges with humorous structures. Starting from these methodological steps, I attempt to perform a multimodal analysis, which consists of analysing both the text and the audio-video record. In the first part of my research, the analysis of the text focuses on specific structures of conventional humour performed in jokes, traditional shouts and dirges by the main theories of humour: superiority, release and incongruity theories of humour. In analysing the audio-video stimuli, I dwell upon identifying the degree of influence of the psycho-sociolinguistic parameters (gender, occupation and context) on the performance of humour, concentrating on markers of humour such as intonation and visual cues. After analysing the humorous sensitive topics in Romanian rural communities through a multimodal perspective, my conclusion is that speakers combine linguistic and non-linguistic elements in order to make a text humorous.

A multimodal generic perspective on Nigerian standup comedy

Author(s): Felix N. Ogoanah,Fredrick O. Ojo / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2018

Studies in stand-up comedy in Nigeria have recently begun to gain serious attention. Several articles that describe the psychological and socio-cultural contexts of joke texts of stand-up comedy in Nigeria have appeared within the last few years (Orhiunu 2007; Imo 2010;Adetunji 2013; Filani 2015, 2016, among others.). However, one aspect of the phenomenon that is yet to be explored is the function of a multimodal generic framework and its contributions to the humorous content of the genre. While it is important to maintain the spoken text as many writers have done, the “multiple embodied modes” (Norris 2008: 13) that amplify the spoken text must be given due consideration. This study, therefore, examines the Nigerian stand-up comedy from the perspective of a multimodal-ESP theory to genre analysis.This theory takes cognisance not only of joke-texts, but also of the visual features that enhance the performance. The material for analysis is videoed data of a popular stand-up comedy show in Nigeria, A Nite of a Thousand Laughs. The study demonstrates that stage management, nonverbal cues (e.g. gesture, movements, and gaze), speeches, body postures, and music/sounds contribute to the communicative value and the production of the genre. Also, it shows how plausible multimodal-ESP approach to genre is in the description of stand-up comedy in the Nigerian context.

A nagyszombati kalmárcéh szabályzata 1547/1604-ben

Author(s): László Fülöp / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2020

The linguist's recent paper examines a merchant guild in Nagyszombat (Trnava), specifically its 16th-century statutes. He mentions by name the merchants of the town and the guild master in charge of the guild. It explains the order of the daily operation of the guild.

A Repertoire of Dongba Pictographs: Challenges and Solutions

Author(s): Xu Duoduo / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2020

Dongba script is a pictographic script still in use in South-West China. The digitization of this writing system became a significant issue in Naxi Studies since Dongba script was enlisted in the World Memory Heritage by the UNESCO in 2003. At the current stage, a critical issue for further technical development is to reach a shared repertoire of Dongba glyphs with the agreement of all the scientific parties. The Dongba dictionaries provide valuable resources and should be used in complete synergy to build up such a character list. The variants of Dongba glyphs, as well as other writings used by branches of Moso People, should be included in order to present a comprehensive documentation of this cultural heritage. A semantic index with the pictographic radicals is necessary for an ideographic writing system as Dongba script, while the studies on Dongba radicals are at a preliminary status. Multiple indexes should be implemented in the repertoire, in order to facilitate the searching of glyphs. For the transcription of character names, an expanded Latin alphabet for Naxi pinyin is suggested.

A Semantic Description of the Combinability between Verbs and Nouns (on Material from Bulgarian and English)

Author(s): Svetlozara Leseva,Ivelina Stoyanova,Maria Todorova,Hristina Kukova / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

This paper represents a methodology for defining restrictions on the semantic combinability between different semantic classes of verbs and the sets of nouns corresponding to the elements of their conceptual frame (i.e. the major participants in the situation described). Our observations focus on verb synsets from WordNet and their assigned FrameNet frames which mutually inform each other. We analyse the semantic information typical for each of the studied verb classes and define semantic restrictions on the nouns they combine with. The theoretical and empirical value of the provided semantic representations and restrictions lies in the enhanced modelling of verb-noun combinability which is universal enough to be applicable not only to the languages exemplified (English and Bulgarian), but (with possible modifications) to various other languages for which wordnets are available.

Absolutely Modifying Adjectives In British And Bulgarian Newspapers In Comparison With The British National Corpus

Author(s): Irina Stoyanova-Georgieva / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 1/2016

The paper studies the collocations formed by ‘absolutely’ used as an adverbial intensifier for modifying adjectives in a corpus of Letters to the Editor, published in British and Bulgarian newspapers, and the BNC. The results of the study show the similarities between the collocations of ‘absolutely’ in English and Bulgarian as well as the resemblances in the choice of a syntactic position of the modified adjectives in both languages.