Difficulty in the translation of botanical names (the names of selected plants in Polish, Slovak and Slovenian)

Abstract

The names of flora constitute a rich and differentiated part of the Polish, Slovak, and Slovenian lexes. There exist studies of the botanical lexis of the individual languages, there are, however, only a few comparative works. Plant names in both Polish and Slovak consist of two parts, being basically translations of Latin names. Botanical names in Slovene often consist of only one word.

It happens that in all the three analyzed languages there is a homogenic homonym, e.g. drevo – drzewo – drevo. There can be cases that two languages have a name of the same gender, but the third language has not or the equivalent is a different lexeme (pierwiosnek – trobentica – prvosienka). Interesting are also cases when the adjective of colour is different (Anchusa azurea – smohla modrá – farbownik lazurowy).

For the translator of scientific texts it is important to know language norms in both languages, to know the grammatical features of these lexemes, to know the word-formative structure and all lexical and semantic meanings, including the stylistic ones, and to be well orientend in the issues of the given field.