”Epähyvä käännös mutta kun en parempaakaan keksinyt”: huomioita englannin pejoratiivisen non-prefiksin suomentamisesta

Authors

• Sari Mäittälä-Kauppila Helsingin yliopisto

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.61200/mikael.129586

Keywords:

Negation, pejoration, irony, coherence, translation, explicitation

Abstract

This article discusses the use of the English negative prefix non- and its pejorative meaning in newspaper columns, with the focus on the use of Finnish negative prefixes epä- and ei- versus explicitation as a possible translation for conveying the pejorative aspect of non-. The material for this case study consists of two English-language newspaper columns and their Finnish translations produced by students of English translation at the University of Helsinki, as well as of the students’ commentaries on the texts, their replies to questionnaires and their motivations for the constructions used in the translations. The theoretical background of the study relates to theories on textual genres, on the concept of coherence and on a multifractorial definition of irony. The methods used include a linguistic response analysis, a contrastive grammar analysis and a semi-structured questionnaire survey. The students, for example, reflected on the acceptability of neoformations with the Finnish negative prefixes as genuine expressions in the Finnish language and assessed the strength and shortcomings of explicitative translations. The results indicate that the translator’s idiolect is a major factor determining the choice of the Finnish equivalent for the pejorative prefix non-.