LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL SPECIFICS OF PAREMIA: NATIONAL AND CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE AND TRANSLATION CHALLENGES

Abstract

The article presents a comparative linguistic and cultural analysis of English, German and Ukrainian paremia, focusing on nationally specific meanings, figurative codes, and translation challenges arising from differences in the conceptualization of collective experience. The relevance of the study is determined by the need to examine paremia as linguistic units in which semantic, pragmatic, ethnocultural, and evaluative components interact. The aim is to identify common and culture-specific ways of representing basic values in paremiological worldviews and to determine their implications for adequate translation. The methodological framework combines comparative, linguocultural, semantic, and contextual-interpretive methods with elements of componential analysis. The material comprises English, German and Ukrainian proverbs and sayings selected from paremiographic and lexicographic sources.

The analysis demonstrates that all three traditions represent universal concepts such as work, time, speech, friendship, truth, caution, and the consequences of human action, while structuring them within different cultural coordinates. English paremia tend to conceptualize these domains through practical effectiveness, timeliness, individual responsibility, and pragmatic expediency. Ukrainian paremia more explicitly associate them with moral norms, household experience, collective evaluation of behaviour, and symbolic models of everyday life. German proverbs reflect a pragmatic, precise and measured approach to communication, which emphasises responsibility and regularity.

The study argues that differences in the figurative organization of paremia are not merely stylistic features but important mechanisms of encoding cultural memory. The novelty of the research lies in systematizing the relationships between a conceptual domain, a figurative code, an evaluative component, and a translation strategy.

It is demonstrated that paremiological translation should reproduce not only denotative content but also the cultural model that structures this content. The findings may be applied in translation theory and practice, as well as in teaching phraseology, paremiology, and linguoculturology.