Translating neologisms in dystopian literature: Lexical innovation in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and its Croatian rendition

This study deals with word formation and translation of neologisms in dystopian literature on the example of Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World and its Croatian translation. Its aim is to provide an insight into lexical innovation in dystopias and their translations by relying on Millward’s (2007) theory of dystopian neology. Based on Millward’s theoretical model, the study hypothesizes that coinage is the least frequent, and derivation the most frequent word formation process among source text neologisms. The third hypothesis states that literal translation and lexical creation are the most productive translation procedures. The research consists of extracting source text neologisms and their translations and analyzing the employed word formation processes and translation procedures. The findings show that compounding is the most prolific creation process in source text neologisms, while coinage and conversion are not used at all. The extracted neologisms are mostly rendered through literal translation and borrowing.