How To Translate Proper Names

How to translate proper names

by

Carmen

never translating proper names seems to be a rule deeply rooted in many people s minds. however looking at translated texts we find that translators do all sorts of things with proper names: non-translation, non-translation that leads to a different pronunciation in the target language, transcription or transliteration from non-Latin alphabets, morphological adaptation to the target language, cultural adaptation, substitution, and so on. It is interesting to note, moreover, that translators do not always use the same techniques with all the proper names of a particular text they are translating.

In fact proper names may be non-descriptive, but they are obviously not non-informative: If we are familiar with the culture in question, a proper name can tell us whether the referent is a female or male people (Alice Bill), maybe even about their age or their geographical origin within the same language community or from another country, a pet (there are typical names for cats, dogs, horses, etc., like Pussy or Fury), a place (Mount Everest), etc. Such indicators may lead us astray in real life, but they can be assumed to be intentional in fiction. Titles and forms of address can also be problematic in translation. The translation of proper names has often been regarded as a simple automatic process of transference from one language into another, because of the view that proper names are mere labels used to identify a person or a thing. This is what Vendler purports when he writes that proper names have no meaning (in the sense of sense and not of reference ), which is borne out by the fact that they do not require translation into another language (Vendler1975:117).

In his view, proper names are to be treated as labels, which are attached to persons or objects and the only task of the translator is to carry them over, or transfer them, from the source

language

text to the target language text.

Primarily, nouns are classified as common or proper. Common nouns refer to a class of entities (e.g. squirrel), while proper nouns have a unique referent (John,London).

There are several noted you need to pay attention:

Proper nouns (PN) do not accept demonstrative pronouns as determiners. One would not normally say this John just bought a car. However, supposing there are several Johns out of whom you wish to single out a particular one, you are already using John as a common noun meaning \’any person called John.\’

PNs do not accept restrictive adjectives or restrictive relative clauses. In the sentence the Old Shakespeare felt the closeness of his death one is implicitly comparing one of several manifestations in time of the person called Shakespeare with the rest, therefore, one is using the word as a common noun in the grammatical sense. The same applies to sentences such as she is no longer the Eve she used to be. One may deny this only at the price of more or less ad hoc explanations about the character of the noun in question. Another way of putting this would be to say that we have to do with two homonymous words John or Shakespeare respectively, one of which is a proper noun, the other a common noun. When in a given speech situation we have a unique reference, we are dealing with a proper noun, otherwise with a common noun.

Opposition between definite and indefinite is neutralized in PNs (a given PN either invariably takes zero articles as in John, London, or invariably takes the definite article as in the Strand, the Haymarket, and the Queen Elizabeth). A seeming counterexample such as that is not the John I was talking about is an instance of John being used as a common noun as seen above. In other words, a noun\’s status as either common or proper is ultimately determined by situational factors. If in a given speech situation, there is a possibility of what looks like a proper noun having multiple referents (this John, two Johns) we have to do with a common noun homonymous with a proper noun.

All of the above features derive from the fact that proper names refer to unique referents.

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