Linguistic and cultural aspects of relationship status on Facebook and Vkontakte

This paper focuses on the differences and similarities of relationship status lexical realization in two social networks Facebook (Fb, American) and Vkontakte (Vk, Russian). This cross-cultural work reveals the variety of lexical forms available to tag a relationship status in four languages (American English, German, French, and Russian) conditioned by cultural and social oriented values. It also discusses translation problems and mistakes caused by different cultural realities. The analyzed translation cases are divided into literal translation, borrowing, transposition, modulation, and adaptation. The authors compare the translations in the two social networks and suggest more adequate and culturally adapted options. In general, there is a prevalence of literal translation (58 % on Fb; 54% on Vk) over other techniques (42% on Fb; 46% on Vk). The results of the analysis show that Fb translations are more adequate and culturally adapted (with only one inaccuracy) than Vk translations (with seven inaccuracies). The findings can be used as recommendations for the social network translators and further linguistic research in cross-cultural issues involving language, culture and society.