Formulemes as a translation issue: a case study of English and Ukrainian

Abstract

The present article focuses on exploring formulemes in English and Ukrainian from a translatological perspective. The multiword units under study constitute a specific type of clichés alongside nickname clichés, termemes and sentencemes. The distinctive characteristic of this class of phrasemes is that they designate a ritualized speech act which correlates with an internal state of the speaker, a moment of time, or a specific event or state of affairs. Formulemes are to be regarded as a hyponym of formulaic sequences and formulas viewed, in turn, as multiword units. Depending on whether the source language formuleme’s formal and/or semantic constituents are fully or partially retained in the target language, formulemes may be rendered literally or using translation shifts. If the target language formuleme’s form and meaning are identical to those of its source language counterpart, word-for-word translation is used, which, however, proves to be an infrequent occurrence in English-to-Ukrainian and Ukrainian-to-English translation. Far more common are cases when the target language formuleme’s form and/or meaning are non-identical to those of its source language counterpart, and so a translation shift takes place. The three basic shifts employed in rendering formulemes are found to be metaphoric transformation, explicitation and antonymic translation. In addition to the three techniques mentioned, contextual translation of formulemes is occasionally possible when conditioned by the pragmatics of the speech act.