Abstract:
The present article focuses on exploring formulemes in English and Ukrainian from a translatological
perspective. The multiword units under study constitute a specific type of clichés alongside nickname clichés,
termemes and sentencemes. The distinctive characteristic of this class of phrasemes is that they designate
a ritualized speech act which correlates with an internal state of the speaker, a moment of time, or a specific
event or state of affairs. Formulemes are to be regarded as a hyponym of formulaic sequences and formulas
viewed, in turn, as multiword units. Depending on whether the source language formuleme’s formal and/or
semantic constituents are fully or partially retained in the target language, formulemes may be rendered literally
or using translation shifts. If the target language formuleme’s form and meaning are identical to those of its source
language counterpart, word-for-word translation is used, which, however, proves to be an infrequent occurrence
in English-to-Ukrainian and Ukrainian-to-English translation. Far more common are cases when the target
language formuleme’s form and/or meaning are non-identical to those of its source language counterpart, and
so a translation shift takes place. The three basic shifts employed in rendering formulemes are found to be
metaphoric transformation, explicitation and antonymic translation. In addition to the three techniques mentioned,
contextual translation of formulemes is occasionally possible when conditioned by the pragmatics of the
speech act.
