TRANSLATION PROBLEMS OF EUPHEMISMS IN THE ENGLISH AND UZBEK LANGUAGES
Keywords:
euphemism, translation studies, English, Uzbek, pragmatics, culture, taboo, equivalenceAbstract
Euphemisms are indispensable linguistic devices employed to soften, obscure, or socially sanitize concepts that may be considered taboo, unpleasant, or socially undesirable. Their translation across languages is particularly challenging because euphemisms do not function merely as lexical substitutes but as culturally embedded pragmatic tools. This paper provides a comprehensive comparative analysis of euphemisms in English and Uzbek, focusing on translation problems arising from cultural asymmetry, semantic divergence, and differing politeness conventions. A corpus of 440 euphemistic expressions extracted from literary texts, political discourse, digital media, and spoken interactions forms the empirical basis of the analysis. Findings reveal that literal translation frequently eliminates the intended pragmatic softening, resulting in loss of politeness, distortion of meaning, or cultural inappropriateness. Functional equivalence, cultural substitution, descriptive translation, and calquing are found to be the most effective translation strategies. The study contributes to the theoretical and practical understanding of euphemism translation between languages with different sociolinguistic and cultural systems.
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