One of the proposed features of translation is the law of growing standardization, or the tendency to modify textual relations of the original text in favor of options more habitual to the target repertoire (Toury 1995: 268). That is, in comparison to original texts, translations seem simpler and more apt to conform to the typical patterns of the target language, thus hiding the “foreignness” of the original text. The primary aim of this dissertation is to investigate whether lexical standardization is a dominant feature of translation in the specially compiled parallel corpus of Lithuanian–English prose works, consisting of 1,7 million words. The extent of lexical standardization can be perceived in the translation of author-specific neologisms—stylistically marked, occasional and contextually dependent lexical items in literary texts. Corpus-based methods are used as a means to identify unconventional, author-specific lexical items and to evaluate whether this unconventionality is retained in target translations. The qualitative analysis of selected author-specific neologisms is followed by a quantitative summary and evaluation of the data. The 166 neologisms selected are classified in terms of their morphological structure, origin, meaning, and grapho-phonological realization. The investigation of preliminary norms in literary translation from Lithuanian into English reveals the prevalence of acceptability-oriented norms. The domination of acceptability-oriented norms at the extra-textual level is transferred to the textual level; this is evidenced by the prevalent standardization of author-specific neologisms. 64% of author-specific neologisms were standardized in translation, which made the texts more fluent and acceptable to the target audience.

Raktažodžiai: standardization, author-specific neologisms, translation of Lithuanian literature