TRANSLATION STRATEGIES OF ENGLISH PROVERBS INTO UZBEK: A DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS

Abstract

Proverbs condense cultural experience into short, fixed forms, and their translation rarely allows simple word replacement. This article examines how 30 English proverbs of general moral and everyday content are rendered into Uzbek. The proverbs were taken from the Little Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (Knowles, 2016) and compared with two printed Uzbek collections (Mirzayev et al., 2005; Karamatova & Karamatov, 2000). Each case was classified as full equivalence, partial equivalence, literal translation or descriptive translation, using criteria adapted from Baker (2011) and Vinay and Darbelnet (1958/1995). Partial equivalence was the most frequent strategy (36.7%), followed by descriptive translation (26.7%), full equivalence (23.3%) and literal translation (13.3%). An Uzbek proverb counterpart was found for 18 of the 30 items (60.0%), but only seven of them kept the original image. The analysis shows that images tied to English everyday realia tend to be replaced or explained, while images drawn from universal domestic and natural experience travel directly. The findings may help translation students choose suitable strategies for proverbs.