Page 26 - Міністерство освіти і науки України

Diminutives have a very poor representation in English but there is a very large
quantity of them in Ukrainian. These words may express either diminutive only or
diminutive and evaluative meaning simultaneously.
e.g. booklet – 1. брошура 2. книжечка, брошурка.
manikin – 1. карлик 2. чоловічок.
In Ukrainian diminutive or evaluative meanings are to be expressed with the help of
suffixes.
e.g. little fingers – пальчики
dear little fingers – пальчинятка
sweet little lips – вустонька, губоньки
dear sweetheart – любoнька
No less extensive is the use of the diminutive adjectives in Ukrainian which have
no semantic and structural equivalents in English because of which they have to be
translated in a descriptive way, which can only partly express their subtle Ukrainian
meanings.
e.g. білесеньке личко – a beautiful white little face
молоденький козаченько – a handsome and lovely youth
тоненькії брівоньки – very beautiful thin little eyebrows
Diminutive and evaluative meanings of Ukrainian numerals, pronouns, adverbs
and verbs are expressed in English practically in the same way.
e.g. трієчка – a miserable C mark
нічогісінько – practically nothing
тихесенько вітер віє – the wind breathes very softly
їстоньки – to have a nice little bite
Neither has the English language any morphological means to express the
augmentative and evaluative meanings of Ukrainian lexemes:
e.g. вовчище - a big formidable wolf
a big monster of a wolf
здоровило – a healthy fellow
3. Specifically cultural notions.
These are the third class of lexical units, which mostly require different outer
form presentation in the target language. When in the form of words not belonging to
regular internationalisms they are mostly transcribed or transliterated and shortly
explicated in the target language:
e.g. muffin – маффин, солодка здоба, випечена в чашкоподібній формі з
прісного чи сходячого тіста (споживається гaрячою).
веснянки – vesnyanky, Ukrainian songs hailing the coming spring.

III Transformations at the syntactic level

First we should note that the majority of syntactic transformations in English –
Ukrainian translation are occasional. It means that the translator transforms the source
syntactic structures on case-by-case basis, each case being dependent on the context,

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