The author's neologisms of W. Gibson's science fiction novel "Mona Lisa Overdrive": Features of word formation and translation from English into Russian

Abstract

The article considers the problem of the functioning of author's neologisms in a literary text as an integral genre-forming feature of science fiction. It is noted that despite the broad interpretation of neologisms as a new word or expression, the science of language has not developed a unified approach to the definition and classification of linguistic innovations. The purpose of the work is to identify the specifics of the interlanguage translation of the author's neologisms of W. Gibson's science fiction novel "Mona Lisa Overdrive" when translated into Russian. The scientific novelty lies in the identification of techniques for creating author's neologisms as the results of the individual author's word formation by W. Gibson, which were first analyzed on the English-language material of the work and the Russian translation by A. A. Komarinets. As a result of the study, three groups of author's neologisms were identified: Gibson's "neologisms-realities", "neologisms-terms", "neologisms-toponyms", constructed by the author according to several models of word formation (creation of a phrase, addition of bases, creation of an acronym, shortening of a word, replacement of the meaning of a word). Based on the comparison of author's neologisms in the original language and in the translation language of a work of science fiction, the specificity of translation solutions for the transfer of author's neologisms into Russian (literal translation, replication, transliteration, search for linguistic correspondences, lexical substitution and descriptive translation, etc.) is revealed, which is determined not so much by the need for an adequate reflection of the graphic or sound form of the author's neologism how much meaning there is in the transmission. Clarifying the specifics of the creation and translation of author's neologisms opens up the possibility of studying modern language development processes and choosing productive translation strategies.