UKRAINIAN CULTURE-LOADED WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE MEDIA TEXTS

Abstract

The article focuses on the problem of the Ukrainian culture presentation in English-language media texts. In any language there exist words and expressions which are closely connected with cultural contexts, the so called culture-loaded words. The cultural code is imprinted in them more than in other words, so their improper interpretation often leads to misunderstanding in cross-cultural communication. That is why interpreting culture-loaded words into another language is a difficult and challenging task. Those who try to depict the realia of Ukrainian life (in our case the English-language journalists), need not only to be familiar with the cultural background of these terms but aware of the ways of rendering their meaning into a different language as well. Not being familiar with the techniques of their interpreting into English can lead to the danger of literal translation, which in turn can result in a misleading translation.. So the article defines the methods of the Ukrainian culture-loaded words rendering into English and highlights the danger of literal translation.

The most commonly culture-loaded Ukrainian words and expressions, used in English-language media texts, come under the following categories: a) proper names (anthroponyms, toponyms, ecclesionyms etc.), b) historic and cultural terms, c) the terms of social and political life of modern Ukraine. The research showed that the most effective way to deal with cultural sense of the analyzed words is to apply transcription provided with a cultural commentary. In such cases the rendering of Ukrainian realia into English is performed with the least loss of cultural coloring.