Single-Word Terms in English Economic Discourse: ‘Word Formation Structure and Translation into Ukrainian

Abstract

The article examines single-word economic terms in the English language. These lexical units, with their compact form and high semantic density, are frequently used in professional discourse, enabling economy of linguistic resources. The material of the study consisted of 256 terms selected from lexicographic sources and professional texts. It is established that the most productive word-formation processes are compounding (47%) and affixation (35%). Less frequent processes include blending (7%), abbreviation (6%), the combination of several word-formation processes (3%), and clipping (1%). It is determined that the choice of а translation strategy partly depends on the structural characteristics of a term. The use of dictionary equivalents prevails for root words and affixed terms with established Ukrainian counterparts, while transcoding is characteristic of internationally circulated economic vocabulary. Compound terms are frequently translated as two-word compounds by calquing, blends tend toward descriptive translation or transcoding, and clipped forms are translated by rendering their full forms in Ukrainian. Acronyms require such methods as transcoding, equivalent Ukrainian abbreviations, or preserving the original Latin form, depending on their degree of standardization in the target language. Overall, the results indicate that awareness of word-formation patterns is essential for achicving both terminological accuracy and linguistic naturalness in translation. The originality of this paper lies in its focus on single-word economic terms in English business discourse and their word-formation structure in connection with translation into Ukrainian. While previous studies have examined business neologisms or multi-word terminological units, single-word economic terms have received less systematic attention as a distinct category characterized by structural compactness and high semantic density. By classifying these terms according to their wordformation processes - compounding, affixation, blending, acronyms, clipping, and combinations of several mechanisms - and analyzing the translation strategies used in rendering them into Ukrainian, the study provides new insights into the relationship between the morphological structure and translation choices in economic discourse. Conclusion. The main challenge in translating such terms lies not in their formal complexity, but in their semantic density and contextual specialization, which requires careful selection of an appropriate translation strategy. Further research may focus on expanding the corpus of economic terminology in order to examine a larger number of single-word terms and verify the productivity of the identified word-formation patterns.