Military terms in the modern war films: translation issues

Abstract

The study explores the military lexicon used in the modern war movies, such as “1917”, “Fury”, “Dunkirk”, “Hacksaw Ridge”, “Unbroken”, “Journey’s End” and “Midway”. The article examines military terms of modern-day war films as well as specialized methods of the interpretation of military lexicon into the translated language. The study discusses military terms and phrases as a key element of the movies’ and suggests its own classification of analysed material. According to their official definitions, their conceptual and semantic meaning, military lexical units are sorted out into the following lexical semantic groups: “Nominations of military way of living” (24%), “Nominations of military professional terms” (31%), “Nominations of military positions, groupings and ranks” (26%), “Military commands” (15%) and “Nominations of enemy’s army soldiers” (4%). The translation of the military lexicon used in the films, which is implemented by Ukrainian interpreting companies, requires thorough approach in the aspects of translating highly specialized vocabulary of an audiovisual product and adapting it in accordance with the context. The article reveals that 51% of the material analysed in the research is translated with the use of complete equivalents – lexical units that coexist in both languages and carry the same semantic meaning. The other part of the lexicon explored is interpreted with the help of translation transformations such as modulation (25%), adaptation (8%), generalization (3%), omission (1%), joining (2%), and transliteration (3%). Additionally, the research determines another group of cases of the language units’ specific interpretation, when jargon words and collocations are applied in the target language (7%). The study’s discussion will contribute to improvements of the further studies of lexicology and terminology of the military branch, thus defining semantic classification of the military language units, dealing with the methods of translation transformations, and selecting the most appropriate translational variations of a particular lexical unit with no accurate equivalents. The material analysed in the article can be used for translating military lexicon in the war films and military projects as well as for studying linguacultural and sociolinguistics studies.