The article is dedicated to the analysis of concurrent verbalizations (also known as Think-Aloud Protocols, or TAPs) of semi-professional subjects of the introspective experiment based on the initial excerpt of Steven Brust’s fantasy novel The Desecrator. The research was conducted on the basis of activity-oriented approach within which translation is treated as an integrated cognitive process that unites perceptive, interpretative and productive operations. The participants of the experiment were students for Master’s Degree in Translation at the School of Foreign Languages of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. The choice was determined by the fact that the subjects of this type have a high level of a foreign language competence as well as sufficient theoretical background in translation, while, at the same time, they lack practical experience which requires from them considerable psycho-cognitive and creative effort for decision-making in ambiguous situations. The aim of the research is to determine the role of adaptation, association and analogy in resolving problem situations in translation. Adaptation, association and analogy were highlighted as both psychological mechanisms and cognitive procedures of the translator’s decision-making. The psychological function of adaptation lies in bringing the translator to the state of adaptivity by applying available knowledge to new situations; its cognitive function lies in adjusting new or alien to the target audience concepts in accordance with the translator’s individual worldview. Psycho-cognitive function of association is twofold: firstly, the translator is expected to decipher and reproduce associations underlying the author’s decisions; secondly, the translator’s own decisions are often of associative nature. Analogical reasonings substantiate the translator’s choices through similarity-based heuristics, like those of representativeness and compatibility. The research allowed to expose some varieties of psycho-cognitive mistakes and to express the assumption that the translator’s erroneous decisions are ensued by the malfunctioning of the above mechanisms, i.e. by incorrect adaptations, associations, analogies.

The aim of the article is to discuss the specifics of a multimodal pun functioning in the English source text of popular science discourse and its translation into Ukrainian. Multimodal pun is considered as a combination of two inhomogeneous elements -verbal and visual, -that is a variety of intersemiotic game/play intended for producing a humorous effect. While the leading role in a multimodal pun belongs to its verbal component, the visual one performs either a creative or an amplifying function. As a result of a case study, four strategies of reproducing multimodal pun in interlinguistic translation are outlined.

The article aims at establishing cultural and cognitive factors influencing the translation of precedent names (PNs). As a prototypical means of conveying firmly established meanings, PNs reveal cognitive mechanisms of expressing the most relevant values through metaphors. Functioning both at the linguistic and cognitive level, PNs accumulate characteristics of stereotype, prototype, metaphor and intertext jointly forming the concept of precedence which determines the degree of cognitive equivalence in case of PNs translation. We claim that cognitive equivalence is the principal criterion for successful PNs rendering since it allows for maximum possible correspondence of the meanings the author embodied in the name and those actualized in the mind of the target reader. The highest degree of cognitive equivalence correlates with preservation of all the elements of precedence, though some of them may be sacrificed to ensure integrity at the level of the entire message. Differences in conceptualizing reality by various cultures lead to discrepancies in the perception of certain phenomena or even loss of precedence inherent in a name when transferred to the target culture. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the translator attempts to establish the scope of PNs use both in the source and target cultures. Proceeding from the cultural status of PNs, (s)he seeks to anticipate if a direct equivalent of the original name invoke the image intended by the author. If in the receiving culture, a PN appeals to a different meaning not established as the prototype of the necessary quality or does not actualize any image, the translator uses transformations aimed at compensating the lack of background knowledge for a potential reader. The degree of transformations the translator resorts to depends heavily on the cleavage between the source and target cultural environment and, consequently, the meanings PNs will communicate for the readers of the original and the translation. The strategies translators employ in literary translation support the hypothesis of the research concerning the interrelationship among the cultural identity of PNs, methods of their translation and the degree of cognitive equivalence achievable against the background of culture-specific constraints.

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The article proposes a psycholinguistic approach to investigating translation strategies on the basis of information obtained in the course of the retrospective experiment designed by the authors and defined as ‘Partial Delayed Report of Problems and their Solution’. The aim of the research is to expose and describe translation strategies for resolving such a variety of translation difficulties as phonographic deviations. The object of the research is translation strategies as a mental by nature and complex by structure plan for the translator’s actions. The subject of the research is specifics of the above strategies’ formation and implementation in literary translation. The main method of the research is retrospective experimental technique ‘Partial Delayed Report of Problems and their Solution’; other methods employed include algorithmic modeling (for prospected translation strategies and substrategies) and comparative analysis (for control units in the source and target texts). The material of the research was twofold: (1) the fragment of Charles Dickens’s novel “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club” and its translations carried out by 21 semi-professional subjects of the experiment; (2) the subjects’ reports in the form of the answers to the questionnaire completed and submitted after the translation. Since strategies in translation studies are mostly dealt with within cultural approach, the authors turned to the concept of communication strategies as a foundation of their own psycholinguistic model of translation strategies for phonographic deviations. The analysis of the experimental data supports the conclusion that the translator initially forms a strategy (conscious mental plan) of overcoming a certain variety of translation difficulties (such as phonographic deviations) and then implements it as a sequence of moves (substrategies) aimed at providing for the most natural for the target reader translation variant.