The thesis is an in-depth research of linguistic and cultural features of Ukrainian and American protocol speeches, especially of the universal and ethnospecific characteristics of their style. The work provides some insights into ways and means of rendering linguistic and cultural features of protocol speeches, transformations used in translation. An attempt has been made at spotting convergence and divergence of discourse markers used in Ukrainian and American texts, ways of rendering their function and meaning into the target language. A thorough analysis of ethnospecific components of protocol speeches, i.e. compliments, quotations, allusions, and ways of their translation has also been conducted. International communication is regulated by the protocol, special norms of etiquette and rules of writing diplomatic documents. Diplomatic documents are written in a formal style characterized by logic, objectivity, abundance of cliches, lack of emotions, elevated politeness and attention to the addressee. Its official nature is also determined by complex syntactic structures, terminology and special vocabulary. Having analyzed numerous protocol formulae in diplomatic speeches, we came to the conclusion that Ukrainian diplomatic discourse is more reserved and less expressive than the American one. Discourse markers of the protocol speeches have a text-formation function, and reflect stylistic peculiarities of the documents. By stimulating the listener's understanding of the texts, they also facilitate the process of translation. Among the translation transformations used to convey the marker's meaning in the target language, the most frequent are lexical substitutions of functional analogues or occasional correspondences for the marker, grammatical substitutions, along with transpositions, followed by additions and omissions. Lexical substitutions of functional analogues never affect the general meaning of the sentence, while occasional correspondences belonging to different functional groups can replace intranslation the lexical units of wide semantic volume. Lexico-stylistic substitutions take place when the translator choose the corresponding discourse marker belonging to a different stylistic register or use instead of the closest natural semantic equivalent an indirect but required by the target language norms variant. Grammatical substitutions are mainly caused by different combining power of words in the source and target languages, different sentence structure, functional perspective requirements etc. Discourse markers of identification of participants are rendered by loan translation and borrowing. Some elements of protocol speeches are transferred into the target text without changes of their form. The extensive body of Ukrainian and English discourse markers was classified into the following functional groups - markers of internal transitions, logical, spatial, temporal relations, beginning and end of the discourse, identification of participants, highlighting, author involvement. Within each of thegroups certain convergent and divergent features of meaning have been studied. The divergent features are mainly represented by a different position of markers in the source and target texts, special shades of connotative meaning, different ways of expressing emphasis, degree of emotional saturation of cliches, redundance or lack of synonymic parenthetic expressions reflecting speaker's deliberation of or attitude towards the information he/she presents. As is known one of the requirements of translation competence is the ability to perceive and understand the source language text through the eyes of another language and culture, the segmentation of reality by different languages is different. Languages are sensitive to extralinguistic world. Each language is an embodiment of national spirit. Hence the differences in semantic structures of the languages and problems connected with rendering linguistic and cultural elements. The translator adapts his/her text according to the rules of usage, linguistic traditions, dominant strategies of presenting and processing information in the target language. Protocol speeches abound in compliments, quotations and allusions which are known as situational realia. Their generous use is considered a universal feature of Ukrainian and American speeches, although understanding and interpretation of these extralinguistic elements represent ethnospecific nature of intercultural communication. Encountering any situational realia conjures up in the mind of the reader or hearer all the aspects of experience which are associated with the typical contexts in which the expressions are used. They encapsulate all the stereotyped aspects of experience and therefore perform a stabilizing function in communication. A person's competence in actively using the situational realia of a foreign language hardly ever matches that of a native speaker. The main problems that ethnospecific components pose in translation relate to two main areas: the ability to recognize and interpret an ethnospecific component correctly and the difficulties involved in rendering the various aspects of meaning that an ethnospecific component conveys into the target language. For the most part, compliments, quotations and allusions are rendered by means of descriptive and explanatory translation, paraphrase and substitution of a hyperonym for the unknown element. Additional lexical components, emotional and evaluative modifiers and intensifiers introduced by the translator make up for the expressive, associative and symbolic semes, absent in the corresponding linguistic and cultural element of the target language. The same strategy is relevant for differentiating between the stylistically marked correspondences. A detailed analysis of linguistic and cultural features of Ukrainian and American protocol speeches makes it possible to draw the conclusion that the use of the universal and ethnospecific elements serves communicative purposes of these documents and are of crucial importance in selecting language means. This fact contributes to a further investigation of rendering discourse markers and ethnospecific components in other genres of diplomatic discourse.
