ON THE ISSUE OF DEFINING THE CATEGORY OF DIMINUTIVENESS

Abstract

The analysis of the phenomenon of diminutiveness and its derivatives presents significant difficulties for the researchers because the views of linguistics on the definition of category of diminutiveness due to the peculiarities of the semantic-functional reality of it are extremely contradictory and its definition is still not set, which determines the relevance of the paper. The objective of the study is to establish the specificity of translation of the phenomenon of diminutiveness in poetic translation. To achieve this goal the continuous sampling method to research materials, the comparative method to compare the original and translated texts, the translation analysis method and the theoretical generalizations method were used. It was determined that diminutiveness is a universal linguistic category that is expressed in the languages of the world using different levels of the language structure and realizes the meaning of a reduced size of an object, a reduced manifestation of an action or sign, and may also be accompanied by some expressive or evaluative-emotional patterns. As a result of a comparative analysis of the original poetry of Taras Shevchenko with its translations into English, it was found that the emotional component of diminutives is reproduced or neutralized in the translation. Techniques that reproduce the emotional component of diminutives include substitution and addition; techniques that neutralize are following: omission, selection of a direct translation equivalent, addition.