Introduction

The term “religious discourse” gained the greatest popularity and spread in the study of speech-
creative processes in the religious sphere. So, studying religious discourse is especially important
now, since it helps to read and understand religious texts, communicate with people who believe
in god, look for and compare different points of view etc. However, despite the fact that
nowadays the translation of modern religious texts doesn’t often become the main interest in
various scientific papers, the need in a wider understanding of other cultures and religions
becomes more and more prominent in today's society. Religious translation has its special place
in the theory of translation precisely because religious texts are united by a special task that all
religious teaching sets before itself in general.

The key problem of this research is to explore the religious discourse in the frames of
institutional discourse and define the characteristics of liturgical translation in depth, and also
describe the issues that can arise in the process of translating religious and sacred texts.

Topicality of the paper lies in a characterization of the fundamentals of the religious discourse, a
thorough description of the main aspects of the liturgical translation and detailed explanation of
the problems, which can arise during the translation of such works.

Object of the paper is ways of characterizing the images of God and Jesus Christ in the hymnal
«Book of Praise» and their 1922 anonymous Ukrainian translation.

Subject of the paper is the main ways of translating characterizations of the images of God and
Jesus Christ in the hymnal «Book of Praise» into Ukrainian language.

Objectives of the paper include the following points:

1. to present the characteristics of the religious discourse in the frames of institutional discourse
2. to characterize the fundamentals of a religious translation in general
3. to list the principles of the liturgical translation
4. to describe the most common issues that can arise in the process of translating sacred texts

5. to name the main strategies which used to deal with the problems in a religious translation
6. to explain the research of a religious poetry
7. to define and analyze the core ideas of the poetic translation ,
8. to analyze the history of Protestant hymns and the ways they have been translated into
Ukrainian language
9. to characterize “The Book of Praise” as an example of the religious hymnal

While analyzing the translation of the characteristics of the images God and Jesus Christ in the
hymnal «Book of Praise» into Ukrainian language in the 1922 anonymous translation, such
methods of translation studies analysis were applied: comparative analysis, contrastive analysis,
etymological analysis, componential analysis, cultural analysis definitional method.

The practical value of this paper consists in the necessity of even more detailed researches on
the topic of liturgical translation in Ukraine, since despite growing
interest of the linguistics and academics in this specific area , one can still observe quite a serious
lack of thorough studies and the profound explanations on this topic. Besides, translation of the
theological works and, in particular, into Ukrainian language, is still not completely examined,
and there are still a lot of parts, which are worth more interest in them.

The whole research is divided into two parts: theoretical and practical. The first chapter dwells
upon the main principles of the religious discourse and liturgical translation in particular,
describes the core characteristics of the Protestant hymnal and covers the most common features
of its translational process into Ukrainian language. The second chapter is dedicated to the
detailed study of the main translational approaches and strategies, which were applied in the
process of translating ways of characterizing the images of God and Jesus Christ in hymnals into
Ukrainian language.
 Conclusions

As the topic of religious discourse and the issues of liturgical translation continue become a quite
an essential part of the linguistic picture of the world, and in particular in Ukrainian language, it
is important to understand various aspects of national mindset, lingual and extralingual
circumstances, languages’ linguistic and cultural peculiarities, which are related to very process
of translation.

The problem of translating ways of defining images of God and Jesus Christ in sacred works is
one of the most pressing ones, since these notions are central in
the most of the theological texts.

The main purpose of the course paper was to conduct a detailed analysis of the translation and
reproduction of semantics of ways of characterizing images of God and Jesus Christ.

During the process of the research, it was found out that:

1. Religious translation has its special place in the theory of translation precisely because
religious texts are united by a special task that all religious teaching sets before itself in general.
The principles of religious translation are determined, first of all, by the prescriptive church
position and do not always correspond to the principles of the general theory of
translation. Therefore, the principles of translation formulated in the instruction of the
Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, “Liturgiam
authenticam” (Rome, 2021).

3. The translation of ways of defining the images of God and Jesus Christ actually requires not
only a profound knowledge of both source and target cultures and the place of religion in
them, deep understanding of religious aspects of people’s lifestyles, but also the
ability to put priorities and decide what factor will be the most important in the
translation and what can be omitted or translated with slight changes.

4. It was established that main strategies for translating images of God and Jesus Christ:
 a direct translation
 a semantic translation
  a communicative translation
 a free translation

5. The main idea of the practical application of all these translational strategies lies in not only
making the translation precise and as close to the original as possible, but also completely
transferring the meaning of the original and making sure that the translated text is natural and
comprehensible for the target reader.

This research only confirms the importance of theological texts and their translations in our
religion and culture in general. All the collected data definitely calls for further, more complex
and detailed research on this topic, as the study of this question has great potential and can bring
in more engaging information about various linguistic and cultural aspects of
translating religious texts, contribute to the general analysis of translating the ways of defining
the images of God and Jesus Christ into Ukrainian language.