As one of the main tasks of translation is to render the exact meaning of words, it is important to consider here the three types of lexical meaning which can be distinguished. They are: referential, emotive and stylistic.
Referential meaning (also called nominative, denotative or cognitive) has direct reference to things or phenomena of objective reality, naming abstract notions and processes as well. Referential meaning may be primary and secondary thus consisting of different lexical Semantic Variants (LSV).
Emotivemeaning unlike referential meaning has no direct reference to things or phenomena of objective reality but to the feelings and emotions of the speaker. Therefore emotive meaning bears reference to things, phenomena or ideas through the speaker’s evaluation of them. Emotive meaning is inherent in a definite group of words even when they are taken out of the context.
Stylisticmeaning is based on the stylistic stratification of the English vocabulary and is formed by stylistic reference, e.g. face (neutral), countenance (literary), mug (colloquial).