Maksym Hnidets
Master’s student at the Department of German Philology
Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University,
Lutsk, Ukraine
e-mail: maximhnidets@gmail.com
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-0325-7509
Oksana Zubach
Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor,
Associate Professor at the Department of German Philology
Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University
Lutsk, Ukraine
e-mail: subach@ukr.net
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1884-6875
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24195/2616-5317-2026-42.10
SUMMARY
The article is devoted to the study of the specifics of translating neologisms of contemporary German into Ukrainian. The relevance of the topic is determined by the intensive processes of lexical renewal of the German language in the context of digitalization, globalization and socio-cultural transformations, which daily generate new lexical units requiring adequate translation. Neologisms by their nature often lack established equivalents in the target language, carry pronounced cultural connotations and perform specific pragmatic functions, which makes their translation one of the most challenging tasks in contemporary translation practice. The article examines the theoretical foundations of neologism research: existing approaches to defining the concept of «neologism» are analyzed, the typology of new lexical units is considered, as well as the main reasons for their emergence in contemporary German. Special attention is paid to the ways of forming neologisms ‒ compounding, derivation, borrowing, abbreviation and contamination. The specifics of translating new lexical units are investigated, taking into account their structural, semantic and pragmatic characteristics, including the concept of the pragmatic potential of the text and its influence on the choice of translation strategy. The main translation transformations used in rendering neologisms into Ukrainian are examined: differentiation of meanings, concretization, generalization, antonymic translation, sense development, holistic transformation and compensation. We analyzed neologisms from the annual «Word of the Year» lists of the Society for the German Language for the period 2021–2025, their word-formation patterns are identified and the corresponding translation transformations are established. It is found that the dominant transformations are sense development and concretization, which is due to the predominantly non-equivalent nature of the units under study.
Key words: neologism, translation, German language, translation transformations, word formation, non-equivalent vocabulary, lexical innovation.
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