Abstract:

This paper first defines "pejorative and obscene expressions" as forms of lexical variation from a diastatic aspect within languages, noting their frequent presence in literature. Through a semantic and translational analysis of pejorative and obscene expressions in German/English literary excerpts, used as exercise material for teaching translation from German/English to Macedonian, we aim to secure their nearest translations into Macedonian. Recognizing that complete equivalence between such expressions in German/English and Macedonian is often unattainable, this study anticipates the use of adaptation or modulation, and occasionally paraphrase, in translating these expressions into the target language. We conduct this survey to see in what extend our students at the study program for Translation and Interpretation, at the Chair of German/English language and Literature are aware of the problematic translatability of pejorative and obscene expressions in literary texts. Furthermore, by carrying out some experiments and questionnaires among students in order to find out if when translating such expressions, it is the ‘dynamic equivalence’ (according to the American linguist Nida, an important representative of the communicative translation theory) that is to be achieved as main goal, as we expect.

Keywords:

Dynamic equivalence, adaptation, modulation, occasionally paraphrase.