Roman Chimeras in Pax Anglo-Saxonica Political Mythology

Conceptualizing the (post)Roman heritage mythological terms in the culture of the socalled Anglo-Saxon world (Pax Anglo-Saxonica) is of relevance due to the importance of the hidden meanings of the political vocabulary so as to carry out their adequate translation. It is significant for the translator to not miss references that reveal illocutive aspects of the communicative acts in the process of intercultural communication. The subject of the study are cultural meanings which anchor the mythological attribution of Roman (post)imperial heritage in the Anglo-Saxon political culture symbolism, and their association with respective Byzantine-Russian versions during the translation process. The research is based on the cultural constructs of the lexical-semantic group (LSG) under the umbrella concept of Pax Anglo-Saxonica, containing an expressed or latent component of the Roman heritage political mythology. In addition, in the multicultural multilingual space there is a need for specialized translation dictionaries of cultural terminology. The study aims to find ways of translating the meanings of the respective cultural terms from English into Russian for effective intercultural communication. The research objectives are: 1) clarification of the specifics of the political mythology of the Roman heritage in the modern English-speaking culture; 2) justification of the choice of the linguoculturology optics for studying the semantics of the LSG Pax Anglo-Saxonica cultural terms; 3) definition of the key stages and techniques for constructing a new imperial myth about the historical role of the Anglo-Saxon world; 4) identification of the studied LSG key subgroups, their description and exemplification; 5) identification and analysis of framework concepts of the geopolitical approach which sets conditions for formation and assimilation by mass consciousness of the political myth about the Roman heritage. The methodology of the study is based on a linguoculturological approach to the political vocabulary analysis, and the multimodal analysis translation strategy. Cultural terms were selected by target sampling. Their translations, verification and dictionary entries construction involved the comparative method. Semiotic analysis was used to translate into the Russian language the meaning of some literary-mythological images. The method of case study helped to identify the most successful translation options when transferring extralinguistic meanings of cultural terms from the source language to the target language. The research resulted in the selection and systematization of the politically charged LSG Pax Anglo-Saxonica cultural terms. The need for the heuristic approach in the technical expert translation of these concepts was confirmed on concrete examples; key LSG subgroups (cultural space, power, reflexivity, reverse translation) are highlighted; and the authors have proposed directions for further research on Roman Chimeras transformation in the political vocabulary and mass consciousness. The findings of the cultural studies of Pax Anglo-Saxonica LSG group are compiled by the authors into a dictionary. The paper considers the most significant examples of its entries providing a detailed analysis of cultural terms, such as: ROMAN LIMES, AETERNA URBS, RAX ROMANA, CARMARTHEN, CAPITOL (space subgroup); KING ARTHUR, KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE, PRIORITY MANAGEMENT (power subgroup); GEOPOLITICAL TYPE, MYTH, PROTO-GEOPOLITICAL CHARACTERISTIC (a subgroup of reflexes); BYZANTINE, TRANSLATIO IMPERII, CONSTANTINOPLE (a subgroup of reverse translations).