TYPOLOGY OF ETYMOLOGICAL LITERALISM

Abstract

Summary. The description of literalism problematics is an age long tradition. Notwithstanding this fact, many dimensions of etymological literalisms or translator’s false friends have been open for academic research both in theoretical and practical aspects. The article focuses on such kind of literalisms as etymological literalisms and explores their definition and typology. The subject matter of this article is crucially topical and reflects the current demand of modern theory of translation for new and profound research in this sphere.The objective of the article is to describe etymological literalisms through the prism of modern Translation Studies. The objective determined the tasks of the research: to define the term “etymological literalism” and to classify their multifaceted essence. Our study relies substantially on the application of linguistic descriptive methodology and devices. The innovation of this article lies in specifying the quintessence of etymological literalism notion which is relevant for understanding the translation interference mechanism and crucial for modern Translation Studies; highlighting and analyzing different types of etymological literalisms. The article claims that etymological literalisms are the result of interference between two languages which leads to translation mistake of usage of externally similar word or word combination that doesn’t respond in meaning to corresponding word in the original. Various factors of etymological literalisms origins contribute to their types selection: English polysemantic word coincides with the Ukrainian one not in all meanings but in one or two; Ukrainian word has meanings that are absent in an English word; both English and Ukrainian words have besides common their unique meanings; similar in form English and Ukrainian words do not have common meanings.