ON THE TRANSLATION OF THE URAL LINGUOCULTURAL REALIA IN THE INTERNET DISCOURSE

О ПЕРЕВОДЕ ЛИНГВОКУЛЬТУРОЛОГИЧЕСКИХ РЕАЛИЙ УРАЛА В ИНТЕРНЕТ-ДИСКУРСЕ

Гаранина Екатерина Александровна

магистрант, кафедра иностранных языков и перевода, Уральский федеральный университет имени первого Президента России Б.Н. Ельцина,

РФ, г. Екатеринбург

ABSTRACT

This article gives a brief introduction to terms such as realia, linguocultural realia, and Internet discourse. Analysis of some Ural realias in the Internet discourse shows that the development of the translation of this type of regional non-equivalent vocabulary is at an early stage and the issue should therefore be investigated more thoroughly.

АННОТАЦИЯ

В статье дается краткая характеристика таких понятий, как реалия, лингвокультурологическая реалия и интернет-дискурс. В результате полученных данных при проведенном анализе некоторых уральских реалий в интернет-дискурсе было установлено, что развитие перевода подобного типа региональной безэквивалентной лексики находится на ранней стадии, в связи с чем данная проблематика нуждается в более тщательном исследовании.

Keywords: linguocultural realia, linguoculturology, realia, Internet discourse, linguoculturemes, translation methods, Ural, non-equivalent vocabulary, linguistic worldview, translation.

Ключевые слова: лингвокультурологические реалии, лингвокультурология, реалия, интернет-дискурс, лингвокультуремы, приемы перевода, Урал, безэквивалентная лексика, языковая картина мира, перевод.

Through getting individual or collective experience, people start to feel the emotion perception of objects and different phenomena to varying degree. By such manners, people acquire associations that form in their consciousness. Most commonly, such associations are tangentially related to cultural stereotypes and linguistic means. This is where realia, particularly the linguocultural one, comes into play.

The problem of realia translation is the research subject of many linguists. The term realia itself was mentioned first in the works in the 1950s. Besides, the representatives of the comparative country study (A.S. Mamontov), linguoculturology (V.V. Kabakchi), as well as the authors of the country study dictionaries (E.M. Vereshchagin, V.G. Kostomarov, N.V. Muravlyova, E.N. Muravlyova) suggest a wider meaning of the notion “realia” conventional for the translation theory and practice, which includes onomastic lexis, proverbs, sayings, phraseological units, and precedent phenomena [2, p. 9]. Such an approach means that subdivision tends to be rather subjective, and as a result, many linguists and translators/interpreters use different strategies in order to show all the possible realia peculiarities in the target language.

In linguoculturology, a discipline that has appeared at the nexus of linguistics and culturology and studies aspects of a people's culture which have been reflected and established in the language [9], we have such term as linguocultural realia or linguocultureme. The term linguocultureme was coined by V.V. Vorobyov. It means a complex interlayer unit of linguocultural field description, which is a dialectical unity of linguistic and extralinguistic content. It has a more complex structure than a word, and its content is divided into linguistic and cultural meanings [14, pp. 44–45].

Discourse studying has a long history and this topic is an object for interest not only for modern linguists, but also for scholars from allied disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, ethnography etc. The term discourse was first introduced in the work of Erik Buissans “Language and Discourse”. It means the mechanism of language as a transformation of a semiotic system into communication. In our modern world, especially after the pandemic COVID-19, most human interaction occurs through electronic communication. This type of communication has three participants: user, computer/smartphone/laptop, and Internet (or any other network); each participant has its own discourse that combines to virtual discourse [15, p. 58]. The virtual discourse exists in the Internet as it uses an electronic data transmission channel. Internet discourse itself is a text production process combined with sociocultural and psychological factors. This process is also purposeful social action involving human interaction.

Russia is a big country, and it is one of the reasons for language differences that have appeared in many dialects and sub-dialects. There were a lot of researches, that studied Russian linguocultural realia according to the nation linguistic worldview. However, linguocultural realias prevalent in some parts of our country, in particular in the Urals, were much less studied in modern linguistics. Also, the research topic is relevant due to the lack of works related to realia translation in the Internet discourse because in this particular type of discourse we see the highest number of linguistic data appropriate for scholars and for linguistic study and analysis.

We have tried to analyse some linguocultural realias according to the classification of linguoculturemes, which was suggested by S. Vlakhov and S. Florin. In this classification, all linguoculturemes are divided into three big groups:

1. Geographical Realia:

• Objects of physical geography and meteorology.
• Names of geographical sites associated with human activities.
• Endemic Names.

2. Ethnographic Realia:

• Daily Routine: food and beverages, clothes and accessories, housing, furniture and kitchenware, transport etc.
• Work: working-class people, working tools, work organisation (including household).
• Art and Culture: music and dancing, musical instruments, folklore, theatre, other art types and pieces of art, players, rituals and habits, festivals and games, mythology, religion, calendar.
• Ethnic Objects: ethnonyms, nicknames, names of persons according to their place of residence.
• Measure and Money: units of measure, currency units.

3. Social and Political Realia:

• Administrative Organization: administrative structure, locations, localities.
• Authorities and Sovereigns.
• Social and Political Aspects of Life: political organisations and political figures, patriotic and civic movements + their representatives, social phenomenon and movements + their representatives, ranks, degrees, titles, addresses, institutions, educational and cultural institutions, social classes and castes + their members, social classes’ signs and symbols.
• Military Realia: units, weapons, uniforms, military personnel and commanders.

The list of different groups of realia mentioned above could also be added with proper nouns, hypocoristics, and degrading word forms [13]. Some of the results of analysing Ural linguoculturemes in the Internet discourse are shown in Table 1 below. Linguocultural realias were chosen with a continuous sampling method. The research also uses descriptive method, matching method, generalisation method, classification method, component analysis and quantitative estimation method. The research material consists of 18 linguoculturemes based on the data of blogs, comments, microblogs, and social networks.

Table 1.

Ural Linguoculturemes Classification

The analysis of linguistic and cultural features of the Ural realia in the Internet discourse showed that such a lexicon has a large linguocultural potential. According to our results, the most popular translation method is the combination of different methods: 45%. The tendency is to be for transliteration + calque (4 cases of 8). Using the calque method comes second: 33%. The transliteration method itself turned out to be the least used: 22%.

We should note that for some realias that we have analysed above and for different realias generally (for example as for the Ural Federal District capital – Yekaterinburg [4]) there are no translation standards yet and due to this fact different sources accept different variants of spelling/translating:

• For the Berezovsky Municipal Area, there is also a variant for translation: Beryozovsky District.
• For the Surgut Municipal Area – Surgutsky District.
• For the Northern Sosva – Severnaya Sosva.
• For the Ugra – Yugra or Iuhra.
• For the Sosva herring – Sosvinskaya herring.

Concluding the general presentation of the list of linguocultural units we offer, we would like to stress once again that we have compiled it considering the peculiarities of linguoculturology as a scientific discipline, which prioritises the study of language and culture and the identification of the national linguistic worldview, and the open character of linguocultural classification, since language and culture are not fixed but constantly developing and transforming phenomena. Due to the article limits, it is difficult to analyse the situation in general for now. Work on the selection of existing realias, identifying the most appropriate methods for their translation, as well as additional research and development of a regional Russian-English linguocultural glossary could be a step forward in the process of overcoming translation difficulties and consolidating linguoculturology as part of general linguistics.

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