PECULIARITIES OF ENGLISH-UKRAINIAN TRANSLATION OF MILITARY TERMINOLOGY

Abstract

The article examines peculiarities of English-Ukrainian translation of military terminology. It is highlighted that an army of every country in the world has its specificity which appears at the structural and organizational levels as well as in the military customs and traditions. The specificity also influences the language level, especially the formation and the use of military terms. The topicality of the research is caused by the difficulties which hinder understanding and translating of military terms, and also by the changes of vocabulary of servicepeople due to the technological progress and reformation of forces. The article outlines the definitions of military terminology and a military term. Thus, military terminology is a systemized, standardized and harmonized set of military terms. A military term is a word (a phrase or a shortening) which, by certain characteristics, denotes an object (a phenomenon, a process) in the military sphere and requires to find an appropriate equivalent in the target language. It is identified that there are three groups of military terms regarding the difficulties in understanding and translating: terms denoting foreign realia, same to the Ukrainian ones; terms which denote foreign realia, absent in the Ukrainian reality but at the same time they have widely accepted Ukrainian terminological equivalents; terms which denote foreign realia, absent in the Ukrainian reality, and which do not have widely accepted Ukrainian terminological equivalents. The findings of the research are the peculiarities of English-Ukrainian translation of military terms and consequential difficulties. Among the problems which are faced during the process of translation are polysemy caused by the heterogeneity of military terminology, difficulties in determining a term and differentiating it from a common word, inadequate perception of pragmatic aspect since both background knowledge and context improve the quality of message transmission. The prospect for the further research is to identify peculiarities of Ukrainian- English translation of military terms.