Silvana Neskovska | Macedonia “St. Kliment Ohridski” (original) (raw)

Papers by Silvana Neskovska

The lexicon of the English language abounds with collocations. Collocations are, in fact, essenti... more The lexicon of the English language abounds with collocations. Collocations are, in fact, essential for both oral and written discourse as they make discourse sound natural, native-like, colorful, versatile and easy to understand. While native speakers of English experience almost no problems with collocations, non-native speakers majoring in English, very frequently struggle hard to develop native-like or near native-like collocational competence. This particular study investigates how Macedonian students majoring in English deal with English collocations. In fact, the study aims at determining whether students face less collocation-related difficulties as their studies advance. Also, the study makes an attempt to disclose whether Macedonian students of English are more adept at producing English collocations or at understanding the meaning of specific English collocations. Finally, the accent is put on the two different types of collocations - congruent and incongruent collocation...

Говорните чинови, како дел од дисциплината прагматика, претставуваат основа за усната комуникациј... more Говорните чинови, како дел од дисциплината прагматика, претставуваат основа за усната комуникацијата во општеството. Секој разговор се состои од говорни чинови преку кои вршиме разни комуникациски функции: соопштуваме, молиме, прашуваме, наредуваме, се извинуваме, се согласуваме, се заблагодоруваме, и сл. Проучувањето на говорните чинови ги открива загатките на комуникацијата и ја подига нашата свесност за силата на зборот. Во оваа книга се разгледуваат комуникациските и културните аспекти на говорните чинови и нивната важност при изучувањето странски јазици. Книгата Говорни чинови: барање, заблагодарување, извинување, приговарање во англискиот и во македонскиот јазик се состои од теориски дел и четири детални истражувања на говорните чинови во англискиот и во македонскиот јазик: изразување барање, заблагодарување, извинување и приговарање. Покрај откривање на механизмите на овие чинови, се дава и објаснување за јазичното однесување на припадниците од различни култури. Со оглед на т...

Requests are face-threatening speech acts, so whenever speakers decide to make one, they need to ... more Requests are face-threatening speech acts, so whenever speakers decide to make one, they need to be aware of its illocutionary force and the effect it has on the hearers. In order to lower the requests’ imposing force, speakers tend to modify them. Thus, they hope that hearers will accept them without feeling threatened. This paper aims to investigate the linguistic means used by speakers to modify their requests both in English and Macedonian, in order to make them more acceptable for the hearers. More precisely, it examines their internal modification with the use of syntactic downgraders and lexical and phrasal upgraders, as well as the external modification with the use of mitigating and aggravating supportive moves. The corpus was collected by using a DCT (discourse-completion test). Three groups of respondents were asked to make requests given some specific situations – Macedonian native speakers (in Macedonian), English native speakers (in English) and learners of English (in...

Thesis, 2020

In the face of the great danger posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, political leaders worldwide, spea... more In the face of the great danger posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, political leaders worldwide, speaking from a position of authority, delivered carefully crafted televised speeches and press conferences, intended to inform the public about the pandemic, its implications and the preventive restrictions they were imposing. The main objective of this paper is to investigate how politicians used language, particularly metaphors, when talking about and interpreting the newly created situation with the Covid-19 pandemic. For the purposes of this study a corpus was compiled of coronavirus-related speeches delivered by several key world political figures – Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Angela Merkel, and Emanuel Macron. The speeches were delivered on a timeline from March to May 2020, i.e. the period that saw the inception, the peak and the gradual withdrawal of the first 'wave' of the coronavirus in Europe and the United States. A contrastive analysis of the speeches was carried out i...

In times of huge political, social, economic and religious turmoil, the world increasingly witnes... more In times of huge political, social, economic and religious turmoil, the world increasingly witnesses a rise in language usage for the purposes of humiliating, dehumanizing and defaming non-likeminded individuals or groups of individuals. The distinguishing feature of this inflammatory rhetoric, also widely known as hate speech, seems to be its ability to spread with the speed of light, infecting societies with intolerance, hatred and aggressive behavior, which, in turn, very often translates into personal tragedies and mass atrocities. Social media like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and many others, definitely play a critical role in disseminating hate speech. The platforms that they provide for their users worldwide are utilized by various parties ranging from high-ranking individuals (e.g. politicians, government officials, journalists, distinguished public figures), to ordinary people from all walks of life, who in their urge to voice their dissent, resort to launching vicious, “vi...

Acta Neophilologica, 2016

Irony has significant stylistic function in texts. Given that in many cases it works in a certain... more Irony has significant stylistic function in texts. Given that in many cases it works in a certain linguistic, cultural, social and political context, irony may present a major challenge for the translator. The challenge involves not only recognizing and understanding it, but, perhaps, more importantly, conveying it in the target language so that all its stylistic effects become accessible for the target language reader. The purpose of this paper is to examine the strategies used to translate irony from English into Macedonian as well as to identify if there is any correlation between the type of irony and the translation strategy used. The results are based on an analysis of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and its translation into Macedonian. The study focuses on ironic utterances and their rendition in translation. The method combines qualitative and quantitative approaches.

А number of socio-cultural factors such as distance, common ground, social status of the ironist ... more А number of socio-cultural factors such as distance, common ground, social status of the ironist and his/her interlocutor, as well as “the victim” of irony, have a very significant impact on the usage of verbal irony. This study focuses on various combinations of these factors and their impact on the incidence with which verbal irony is used in formal and informal speech in Macedonian and English. In that respect, the analysis of the linguistic corpus, purposefully created for this research, reveals certain similar and dissimilar tendencies in both languages. For instance, in informal speech, both Macedonian and English speakers tend to use verbal irony more frequently when they have equal status with their interlocutors. Macedonian speakers, nevertheless, are more prone to using irony when addressing acquaintances and complete strangers with whom they share ‘low’ or no common ground, respectively, whereas English speakers prefer using verbal irony with closest family members and fr...

Rendering idiomatic expressions from SL into TL is one of the most challenging tasks in the trans... more Rendering idiomatic expressions from SL into TL is one of the most challenging tasks in the translation process. Identifying, correctly interpreting and finding a proper translation equivalent for idioms often become a major obstacle for translators. Idiomatic expressions are language- and culture-bound and their proper transfer from ST to TLrequires an excellent command of both mother tongue and foreign language as well as of SL and TL culture. The paper aims to investigate the process of translating idioms from English into Macedonian. The goal is to ascertain what strategies are employed in translating idioms (e.g. idioms with the same form and meaning; idioms with the same meaning but different form; literal translation of idioms; omission of idioms, etc.). For the purposes of this research, the paper offers an analysis of a random selection of idiomatic expressions used in Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, “Much Ado About Nothing”, and their translation equivalents in the Macedoni...

Linguists concerned with diachronic research of English have established several main periods of ... more Linguists concerned with diachronic research of English have established several main periods of development of the English language: Old–English (450-1100); Middle English (1100-1500) and Modern English which is further subdivided into Early Modern English (1500-1700) and Late Modern English (1700 - ). The aim of the paper is to explore the most important social, political and cultural factors that marked all these three major periods, as they undoubtedly exerted heavy influence on the making of today’s English. In fact, the paper attempts to follow closely the intricate and extraordinary story of the development and evolution of the English language since its inception to date. It traces some of the major ups and downs of the language and their correlation with particular historic events primarily (but not exclusively) from Britain’s great and turbulent historic past and present. The paper tries to demonstrate how all of that has been manifestly reflected in the language at variou...

Abstract<br>Political discourse mainly serves as a platform where a struggle for power take... more Abstract<br>Political discourse mainly serves as a platform where a struggle for power takes place. Nevertheless, political resignation speeches stand out because their purpose is completely different – politicians relinquish power to other political actors. Quitting a high-ranking public position is never a simple matter; consequently, politicians are extremely cautious in coming forward with well-structured and well-phrased speeches. This research looks into the syntactic formula politicians apply in announcing their resignation. The focus is placed on determining the types of sentences (both according to function and structure) the resigning politicians prefer; their usage of syntactically marked sentences versus sentences in which the SVOCA rule is observed. Finally, the different realizations of the Subject and the use of passive voice are analysed, since these are deemed to have a direct bearing on the amount of responsibility politicians assume. The study offers a lingu...

Poetry translation is considered the most challenging type of translation. Translators are faced ... more Poetry translation is considered the most challenging type of translation. Translators are faced with many dilemmas as they work on several different levels simultaneously in an attempt to preserve in the target language as many features of a particular poem as possible. This is not an easily achievable aim, especially, if the poems are products of a poetic mastermind who skilfully juggled with a range of poetic features. The study at hand aims to analyse the treatment that the poetry of one such poetic genius, Gane Todorovski, received when rendered from Macedonian into English. More precisely, given the profound differences between Macedonian and English, the study investigates how specific poetic features such as rhyme, rhythm, sound, tropes, word choice and word order have been handled in the translation. It also tries to provide answers to several common translators’ dilemmas that obligatorily emerge in the process of poetry translation. The study shows that the translators of ...

The subtle nature of ironic expressions, which very frequently serve to elegantly but covertly ‘s... more The subtle nature of ironic expressions, which very frequently serve to elegantly but covertly ‘sting’ the interlocutor, inevitably entails using cues or signals which point to the ironic intent of the ironist. Research has shown that there is a wide variety of linguistic items which undertake the role of signals in adequate ironic contexts. In this paper we focus on the stylistic signals of verbal irony as a separate category. In fact, the purpose of this study is to look deeper into their usage in Macedonian and English formal and informal speech. The accent is put, primarily, on ascertaining the frequency with which they occur in oral expressions; and, secondly, on determining the different types of stylistic signals. The results obtained indicate that metaphor, hyperboly, personification, understatement, synecdochy as well as proverbs are the most commonly used stylistic signals of verbal irony in both formal and informal Macedonian and English discourse.

This study deals with grammatical collocations, and investigates how successfully these are trans... more This study deals with grammatical collocations, and investigates how successfully these are translated from Macedonian into English in journalistic texts. A small-sized parallel corpus was compiled for the purposes of this study, comprising 14 long news articles (7originally written in Macedonian and their respective translations into English) all of which were published in the Macedonian daily newspaper “Nezavisen”. Somewhat over 100 grammatical collocations have been extracted from the original texts and these were consequently compared with their renderings in English. In analyzing the results both the qualitative and quantitative paradigm were considered. The study was based on two hypotheses:1) a considerable number of erroneous translations of the grammatical collocations will occur in the target texts, and 2) the lexical patterning of the Macedonian collocations differ greatly from the lexical patterning of their English counterparts. The research yielded some interesting and...

Journal of Contemporary Philology, Ss Cyril and Methodius University, B Koneski Faculty of Philology

Collocations play a vital role in language by making it sound more natural, precise and interesti... more Collocations play a vital role in language by making it sound more natural, precise and interesting. Hence, handling collocations with special care and vigilance should be high on translators' agendas. The aim of this study was to determine how Mace-donian translators fare in rendering lexical collocations from Macedonian into Eng-lish in journalistic texts. The questions addressed were the following: Are lexical collocations correctly rendered from Macedonian into English?; Are the same types of lexical collocations preserved in the translated texts?; What are the high-frequency and the low-frequency lexical collocations in the original and translated texts?; What translation strategies are employed in rendering lexical collocations? The results of the study indicate that there is a high level of awareness on the part of translators when it comes to rendering collocations correctly. Surprisingly, there were also more similarities than differences in the internal structure of TL and SL lexical colloca-tions, with the most prominent types in both languages being: adjective + noun and verb + noun. Finally, literal translation was the most frequently employed translation strategy, yielding mostly positive results in all likelihood because all of the analysed collocations were used in the domain of politics and were cross-linguistic.

Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT

Corpus linguistics has surely secured its position and status in the world of science nowadays. I... more Corpus linguistics has surely secured its position and status in the world of science nowadays. Its role in linguistic research, and consequently its implications for the linguistic theory and practice are practically indisputable today. Nevertheless, what started capturing researchers' attention in the last decades is the role that corpus linguistics has in the domain of translation studies and training. In fact, corpus linguistics has extended its influence so much that it is safe to claim that providing proper training to trainee translators and doing translation in general is inconceivable and inadmissible without taking full advantage of the benefits of corpora. The paper aims to take a closer look at the current research done on the role of corpus linguistics in the sphere of translation studies and translation training by examining closely some of the most recent and relevant studies which have dealt with this issue recently. More specifically, the aim of the paper is to offer an overview of the most salient findings and results obtained from these studies, and eventually to draw conclusions as to how future translators could apply these insights into their practical work in order to secure their competitiveness in the global labour market.

Thesis, 2020

Acta Neophilologica, 2016

Journal of Contemporary Philology, Ss Cyril and Methodius University, B Koneski Faculty of Philology

Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT

Acta Neophilologica, 2016

Irony has significant stylistic function in texts. Given that in many cases it works in a certai... more Irony has significant stylistic function in texts. Given that in many cases it works in a
certain linguistic, cultural, social and political context, irony may present a major challenge for the translator. The challenge involves not only recognizing and understanding it, but, perhaps, more importantly, conveying it in the target language so that all its stylistic effects become accessible for the target language reader. The purpose of this paper is to examine the strategies used to translate irony from English into Macedonian as well as to identify if there is any correlation between the type of irony and the translation strategy used. The results are based on an analysis of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and its translation into Macedonian. The study focuses on ironic utterances and their rendition in translation. The method combines qualitative and quantitative approaches.