Klaipėdos universitetas

The idea of (un)translatability, that features of one language are too difficult to be translated into another language due to cultural differences, appeared in the Renaissance, was developed by German Romanticism, and evolved together with translation studies. The dichotomy of the term, different types and perspectives on (un)translatability, led to different definitions. Research on (un)translatability questioned whether translatability is possible, what the relationship between (un)translatability and equivalence and culture is, and whether (un)translatability has a place in modern translation studies. The questions are controversial, but the concept remains relevant to modern translation studies.

This article focuses on compound nouns and adjectives in the first dictionary by K. Sirvydis Promptuarium dictionum Polonicarum, Latinarum et Lituanicarum. The analysed compounds are firstly divided into groups according to the part of speech the constituents of the compound belong to, seeking to identify the most productive model of compounds in this 17th-century source. Moreover, attention is also paid to the relationship between elements of compound words and to rare compound words of indirect meaning. Finally, the use of Lithuanian compounds is compared to neighbouring Polish words, to clarify if Sirvydas tended to use mechanical translation.