Дължината на думата в английския, немския, руския и българския език

Speaking of inequality of the word length in different languages and its importance for the translation of poetry, films, etc., most authors do not consider the length of the original and the translated texts. In the present paper, studying the average word length in the English, German, Russian and Bulgarian languages, besides the traditional comparison of the mean number of syllables, the ratio of the notional and functional length of words is compared along with the information they convey. Consequently, decisive is not only the number of the short and the long words in a given pair of languages, but the average word length, the semantic content they carry and the total number of syllables in the given text. All that leads to certain principles applicable in translation from a more verbose language with shorter words into one with longer words, or vice-versa.