FUNCTIONAL ADAPTATION OF USER DOCUMENTATION TERMINOLOGY IN UKRAINIAN AND SPANISH LOCALES WITHIN AN AUTOMATED TRANSLATION PROCESS

Abstract

The article examines the specific features of adapting user manuals for kitchen household appliances to the Ukrainian and Spanish locales within the context of an automated translation process. The study is based on multilingual user instructions issued by Philips (NA110, NA120, NA32X/NA33X/NA34X, HD928X, HD9876, HD9100), as well as manuals for built-in kitchen appliances by TEKA (ML 822 BIS / ML 8220 BIS / ML 82-G1 BIS / ML 82-VGogh BIS, MS 6220 BIS / MS 6226 BIS). The analyzed texts belong to the genre of technical and instructional documentation for mass users and are characterized by a high level of macrostructural standardization. The research methodology combines genre-functional and contrastive analysis of the English, Ukrainian, and Spanish versions of kitchen appliance user documentation for different product versions, which made it possible to identify the impact of the automated translation process on the stability and variability of localized texts. It has been established that the systematic use of translation memory ensures terminological stability and cognitive coherence of the localized product (Spanish locale), whereas its absence leads to unjustified variability and reduced usability of the documentation (Ukrainian locale). Based on the analysis of user manuals, it is demonstrated that deviations from standard strategies for rendering the names of culinary dishes as realia are, in most cases, not translation errors but deliberate localization decisions aimed at adapting universal household appliances to national culinary practices. The study also shows that localization of kitchen appliance user documentation within an automated translation process is primarily grounded in a functional adaptation strategy, whereby deviations from formal-semantic equivalents are motivated by the need to reproduce the expected cooking outcome while taking into account national food practices and the technological parameters of the appliance