Peculiarities of rendering English culture-bound vocabulary

Abstract

The article examines the translation of culture-bound lexical units within the linguocultural approach as an essential component of intercultural communication. The relevance of the study is determined by the growing role of translation in a globalized world and the necessity to adequately reproduce national and cultural specificity in translated texts. The aim of the research is to identify the peculiarities of translating culture-bound units, analyze their classifications, and substantiate the role of linguocultural translation strategy in conveying cultural meanings. The research is based on descriptive, comparative, and linguocultural methods, as well as contextual analysis. Different approaches to defining culture-bound vocabulary are considered, existing classifications of culture-bound units proposed by Ukrainian and foreign scholars are analyzed. The study suggests dividing culture-bound vocabulary into proper names, realia, and symbolic units representing different types of cultural information. It is established that translation of such units requires the application of a linguocultural strategy involving the choice between foreignization and domestication depending on the communicative purpose of translation. The main techniques of rendering culture-bound vocabulary are identified, including transcription, transliteration, calque translation, descriptive translation, and functional equivalents. The study demonstrates that taking into account cultural specificity helps preserve pragmatic potential and ensures translation adequacy. The findings confirm the necessity of a comprehensive approach to translating culture-bound units with consideration of intercultural context.