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Abstract: The growing number of translations from Russian into foreign languages and vice versa causes a stable interest in the profession of a translator and the problems of translation studies. The article deals with the phenomenon of paronymy in modern languages as a cause of difficulties in distinguishing and using formally similar words not only for native speakers, but also in intercultural interaction in the context of bilingualism and translation. The aim of the article is to analyze paronyms in Russian, Spanish, French and English and on the basis of the results of the analysis to develop a series of training exercises that could be used in the education of future translators to avoid pseudo-equivalence in their professional activity. Paronymy has received much attention in the works of linguists on the example of German and English languages, while paronymy in Spanish and French in comparison with Russian is analyzed in very few articles, which increases the relevance of this study. A number of methods are used to achieve the goal: the comparative method, the method of continuous sampling, lexicographic analysis, the method of corpus text analysis, quantitative calculation, description, and analysis. The study distinguishes intralingual and interlingual paronyms, the latter, in turn, are considered as a special case of interlingual pseudo-equivalence. It is noted that paronymy is not only a static linguistic phenomenon described from the point of view of phonetics, orthography, morphology, and stylistics (which distinguishes such related concepts as paronomasia and paronymic attraction), but also has dynamic cognitive and functional-communicative specific features. The development of corpus linguistics, which provides solid empirical material to be studied and used for linguodidactic purposes, has become a new turn in the study of paronymy. Etymological proximity is not a mandatory criterion for referring lexemes to intralingual or interlingual paronyms, and we are not talking about paronomasia or paronymic attraction as conscious word creation. Interlingual paronyms take up on average about 20% of the total number of interlingual pseudo-equivalents for the language pairs under analysis. A special role in the study of pseudo-equivalence and interlingual paronyms is played by innovative associative dictionaries reflecting psycholinguistic meanings and concepts stored in the consciousness of language speakers. The results obtained in the article can be used in lexicographic practice, and in teaching the practical courses of translation and lexicology. The developed samples of exercises are organized according to the principle of increasing complexity, from the distinction of intralingual paronyms to interlingual paronyms, from individual lexemes to contexts.

About the author(s) :

Aleksandra I. Tomilova

Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin

(Ekaterinburg, Russia)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4233-8248

Nataliia V. Sandalova

Ural State Pedagogical University (Ekaterinburg Russia)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2053-589X

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 24.11.2024; date of publication: 29.12.2025

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