CLASSIFICATION OF MODERN AMERICAN SLANG AND APPROACHES TO ITS TRANSLATION

Abstract

The article aims at studying the classification and analysis of modern American slang, taking into account its lexical and semantic features, as well as at considering the main approaches to its translation. The study of the classification of American slang is an important issue for several reasons. Firstly, slang performs not only a communicative function, but also expresses and shapes certain socio-cultural and identification aspects that characterise groups of people or subcultures within society. Due to its constant transformation, slang is an important object of study, as it contributes to the understanding of the dynamics of linguistic evolution and socio-cultural transformations in modern society. Slang terms, which are often used in colloquial speech, can undergo the process of assimilation into the national language and, as a result, lose their original expressiveness. As a result, the terms fall out of active use, or their meaning is gradually forgotten in the lexical arsenal of the language. The transformations observed in the field of slang represent an aspect that remains insufficiently studied in the scientific literature. We have studied the corpus of slangisms of the general American slang in the following groups: relations between people; physical activity; hobbies; a man and the world around, with separate thematic subgroups in each group; we have also considered the classification of special slang, which includes the following categories: student slang, teenage slang, military slang, football slang, nautical slang, and motorist slang. For each of these categories, appropriate slang units were selected and the most effective methods of translation were offered. The most common methods of translation were found to be the descriptive one and that of equivalent correspondences, namely the use of simple substitution (full equivalent) or selective substitution (analogue).