THE QUANTITATIVE METAPHOR IN THE ENGLISH-UKRAINIAN TRANSLATION

Abstract

The article focuses on translating the English three-component quantitative metaphor which consists of a metaphorised noun, preposition «of» and a noun denoting substance into Ukrainian. The paper aims to find out and explicate reasons of divergent grammatical forms of source and target nouns in quantitative structures. The study analyses cases of using target lexical units that are not considered to be equivalents for source metaphorised nouns in the English-Ukrainian translation and explains the necessity of applying such translation technique. The authors have noticed that the same semantic groups of nouns are metaphorised in the English and Ukrainian languages, apart from the group of animal names. The one and only English noun «whale» can be used in the three-component quantitative structure to denote indefinitely large quantity. It has been mentioned that English metaphorised nouns can be substituted with stylistically neutral lexical units while rendering into Ukrainian such as «багато», «величезний», etc. A metaphorised noun can be sometimes modified by the adjective «цілий» in the target text in order to emphasize the meaning of indefinitely large quantity. The English three-component quantitative metaphor is rendered into Ukrainian by means of the two-component metaphor which consists of a metaphorised noun and the genitive form of a noun denoting substance. Another twocomponent structure that consists of an adjective and a metaphorical noun can be used in the target text, but the latter structure acquires slightly different meaning from that of the former. Pursuant to the linguistic norms of the Ukrainian language a metaphorical noun is used in the singular and a noun denoting substance is used in the plural if the inflectional paradigm of a noun allows these number forms. As far as the English language is concerned, both nouns of the quantitative structure can obtain both number forms if their inflectional paradigm allows. The mentioned phenomenon can cause divergence between grammatical number of a source and a target noun in the English-Ukrainian translation. The authors highlight that usage of Ukrainian lexical units that are not equivalents for English metaphorised nouns is caused by the difference in the linguistic norms of combining metaphorised nouns and nouns denoting substance.