Nonce words by J. Joyce in Ukrainian Translation

Abstract

The paper focuses on the specifics of reproducing nonce units coined by the author of the original literary work into Ukrainian. Nonce formations are topical and promising object of translation studies due to the whole range of reasons. First, a variety of their representations is of great interest in terms of their interpreting. In most cases, interpretation of nonce units is complicated as their morphemic structure is vague. Second, nonce units belong to the words with no direct equivalents in other languages, which greatly complicates the ways of their reproducing in the target language. Thus, dealing with each particular nonce formation in the source language, the translator has to apply non-standard approaches to selecting/coining its equivalent in the target language. So, the great contribution of the translator, his/her importance compared to that of the author of the literary work is proven. Ulysses abounds with nonce formations, making the whole piece of writing extremely challenging for translators. We classify Joyce’s nonce formations by their word-building patterns into two groups: phonographic (coined by means of combining phonemes) and morphological (coined by means of random combining morphemes or their segments). This makes it possible to conclude that the morphological structure of nonce units impacts both interpreting and coining their equivalents. However, the universal approach or strategy to their reproducing in the target language does not exist. In every case the translator should take into account the whole range of factors including but not limited to rendering pragmatic intentions of the author of the original literary work and uniqueness of his/her individual style. While reproducing nonce words of the novel Ulysses into Ukrainian, in most cases translators applied calque (loan translation) and compensation rather than transcoding. Their choice of the domestication strategy can be explained by their attempts to make one of the most difficult novels more accessible to Ukrainian readers.