Web Translation Projects/Approaches to Translating Dialect/Lexicalisation

In lexicalisation, the translator performs partial intralingual translation (only on the level of lexis) and full interlingual translation. This means that all dialect markers except for lexical ones are removed from the translation. Lexicalisation inconsistently anchors character speech in a non-standard linguistic community, therefore making their social identity imprecise but, unlike the previous strategy, does not fully forego social deixis. This is, then, a strategy employed by translators when they are willing to forego some, but not all, of the sharpness of the social deixis.

The lexicalising strategy can be used to achieve different kinds of deixis depending on what language group the lexical elements relate to, and is therefore divided into four types:

Rural lexicalisation
Uses vocabulary that anchor the speaker along geographical lines, in the language group that characterises them as members of a social group that comes from a particular region, in this case, the country.

Colloquial lexicalisation
This type of lexicalisation strategy identifies the speaker along the social dimension and employs vocabulary items that are used in the colloquial variety of the TL, implying often an uneducated/lower class speaker, who does not adjust their speech to the formality of the situation.

Diminutive lexicalisation
This strategy, according to Berezowski, identifies the speakers as very young or very old through the translator's use of diminutives in the TL. In the example below, Berezowski additionally predicts that the use of diminutives was dictated by the need to make the translated work accessible to a child audience.

Artificial lexicalisation
This sub-strategy attempts to convey the same social deixis as in the SL texts, which locates the characters in a fictitious social group of the future. The vocabulary employed in the TL by the translator will be then foreign to the target audience and have futuristic connotations. Artificial lexicalisation is used if the SL text also employs non-existent, invented, futuristic vocabulary.