The verb “seem” and its translation equivalents in German and Russian as markers of the category of seeming

The article is dedicated to the comparison of “seem”-type verbs in English, Russian, and German to specify the meanings of the verb “seem”. The aim of the study is to identify the features of the realization of the category of seeming in translation equivalents of the verb “seem” by comparing H. G. Wells’ novel “The Time Machine” in three languages. The scientific novelty consists in clarifying the features of the semantics of the verb “seem” in connected speech, for which the English original and texts of translations into German and Russian are used. The results obtained showed that four strategies are used to translate “seem”, sometimes complementing each other: 1) by a seeming (congruent) verb; 2) by replacing with a lexical unit that emphasizes one of the contextually actualized meanings of “seem” – personal opinion, assessment of the reliability of knowledge, uncertainty, comparison, perception, approximation, logical conclusion, appeal to “another’s word”, etc.; 3) by omitting the seeming verb with a change of modality to reliable or with contextual compensation of seeming in dynamic and emotional contexts; 4) by syntactic substitution with the meaning of subjectivity. The dominant strategy is the translation by a congruent seeming verb, which accounted for 72.5% of correspondences in German and 65% in Russian.