OCCASIONALISMS IN THE DYSTOPIAN GENRE: THE TRANSLATION ASPECT

Abstract

The article reflects the dystopian genre as a relevant way of comprehending the past, present, and future reality in the context of socially resonant events and political cataclysms. The status of dystopian works within contemporary literature is determined. Occasionalisms in dystopias are discussed – new words generated by the author that are used in the discourse without current fixation in language dictionaries. The authors describe the role of occasionalisms in writing a dystopian book, including their potential to produce a communicative effect on the target audience. As a pilot experiment, the authors consider George Orwell’s work “1984” as an example of a classic dystopia with a solid inventory of occasionalisms that play a significant role in impressing and persuading readers. Along with the source text, two Ukrainian translations by Vitalii Danmer (2013) and Viktor Shovkun (2015) are compared. The books are contrasted in terms of their foreign cultural adaptability, i.e., how well the translators have conveyed the idea that the author of the original work wanted to produce for readers. The main attention is paid to occasionalisms. The meanings of specific occasionalisms are identified with the author’s connotation inherent in them. Translation and word-formation techniques that can reproduce a given meaning are identified: calquing, abbreviation, derivation, compounding, etc. Finally, the results are summarized. A conclusion is made which of the authors is better at rendering occasionalisms and to what extent their skills ensure the translation adequacy of the dystopian work.