Semantic and structural challenges of translating modern English agro-engineering terminology into Ukrainian

Abstract

The study analyzes semantic and structural peculiarities of translating modern English agro-engineering terminology. Agro-engineering terms represent the up-to-date level of agriculture development noted for advanced mechanization, application of various technical processes, new technologies, etc., this causing additional translation problems. Besides, agricultural terminology encapsulates field-specific lexis as well as mathematical, mechanical, biological and general scientific terms. Translation difficulties are closely related to lingual characteristics of agro-engineering terms (structural peculiarities, synonymy, homonymy). Playing a significant role in forming this segment of professional lexicon, multi-component units are difficult to translate due to their length and non-prepositional bonds in most cases. The main research methods include comparative and contrastive analysis as well as the quantitative method. The results obtained reveal that a variety of techniques applied to translating English agro-engineering terms into Ukrainian include equivalence, analogue, descriptive techniques, transliteration, grammatical and lexical transformations. Yet, the most frequent technique is equivalence. Application of different translation techniques in multicomponent phrases can cause inconsistences in the number of components in a terminological phrase in a target language. The authors suggest an algorithm of English-Ukrainian translation of agro-engineering multicomponent terms. The paper is intended for a wide range of specialists interested in translating agro-engineering texts, teaching ESP, students of translation departments and experts in the relevant field of knowledge.