LINGUAL PECULIARITIES OF TRANSLATING FORENSIC TERMINOLOGY FROM GERMAN INTO UKRAINIAN

Abstract

The article investigates the peculiarities of translating forensic terminology from German into Ukrainian within audiovisual discourse, using seasons 1-3 (1994-1997) of the TV series “Kommissar Rex” as source material. The aim is to identify lexical, syntactic, and functional transformations of terms belonging to the thematic group “Untersuchung” (investigation) and to assess the degree of equivalence in dubbing and subtitling.

The study employs comparative, contextual, classificatory, and quantitative-qualitative analysis. A corpus of 52 terms was compiled from police dialogues, expert statements, and investigation scenes. Each term was examined at three levels: lexical (origin and reproduction strategies), syntactic (construction transformations), and functional (nominative, communicative, and stylistic roles within the series context).

Key theses focus on the impact of differences between German and Ukrainian legal systems, audiovisual format constraints (synchronization, timing, subtitle readability), and the need to balance linguistic accuracy with pragmatic effectiveness. Results demonstrate that formal equivalence was applied in 42 % of cases (22 terms), partial functional adaptation in 35 % (18 cases), and descriptive translation or transliteration in 23 % (12 cases). Syntactic transformations occurred in 58 % of contexts, primarily active voice substitution for passive (40 %), sentence splitting (33 %), and word order rearrangement (27 %).

Special attention is paid to the thematic group “Untersuchung”, which serves as the semantic and functional core of the forensic discourse in the series. The analysis reveals that terms of this group require the most flexible adaptation, as they combine procedural, legal, and communicative aspects of investigation. It is within this group that the interaction of lexical, syntactic, and functional levels of translation manifests itself most vividly.

The study concludes that translating forensic terminology in audiovisual genre requires flexible adaptation: technical terms maintain high accuracy, while legal realities and culture-bound elements are adjusted for natural perception by the target audience. The findings have practical value for teaching audiovisual translation, improving subtitles/dubbing of forensic content, and future corpus-based studies of contemporary translations.