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The Job of Eponimical Items Translation. (Track This Article)

Translators into Russian like to say that proper names are often transliterated and there is no need to bother translating them from English. Moreover, as observations show it is really put into practice. Nonetheless, there is a particular type of proper names that are not subject to this rule or are subject to in only in part.

An example are expressions that in part are made of a proper name and there are also regular words. Here we speak of eponymous vocabulary. But prior to setting the limits of the kind as well as various related problematic issues dealing with eponymous phrases functioning in Russian translations, it is a good idea to pay a bit of attention to the notion of the eponym and how this term functions in the language of linguistics. All words inEnglish and Russian can be grouped into two separate groups: proper names and appellative names. The word "eponim" comes from the Greek language, where it stood for "smth. or smb. giving the name". In thepast eponyms appeared from the names of people, heroes or deities to be later used in the names of settlements, tribes, objects and even governmental posts. During this time the historic notion of "eponym" expanded,as now it was used to refer not only to the personal name, but now it could be used to name animals or an objects.

These days the linguistic term "eponym" is more often used when you refer to regular words which have been chosen in a language on the basis of displacing one word from the category of proper names to the category of regular words with simultaneous allocation of metaphorical lexical meaning. Hence, we deal with 3 separate elements of an eponym:

1. an entity or an object

2. proper name

3. common word.

Therefore, the Russian translators while translating eponymisms have to deal with the problem of formulating an instant assumption about the background knowledge of users of the English text and the users of its Russian text. The connotation of eponym comes from the cultural context. As Russian and English languages have different etymological past, there are different explanations of how proper namesturn into eponyms. The primary issue related to eponymisms is the subject of their etymological transparency which is a secret peculiarity that relies on the cultural competence and encyclopedic knowledge of Russian native speakers. There is a question here: in what way should an interpreter deal with eponyms? There is no doubt about the fact that such eponymisms as lolita "an underage sexually attractive lady" or a superman “a very strong, very clever and very honest man" are etymologically transparent both to English and to Russian audiences so making Russian interpretation of them does not cause any problems.

If there is no clear understanding of the connotation among the speakers from the two cultures, then again the job of an interpreter is pretty easy. (e.g.: Adonis named after a handsome young man loved by both Aphrodite and Persephone and murdered by a wild boar, or the game of badminton that got its name from Badminton in SW England, country seat of the Duke of Beaufort, where people started playing it). Nevertheless, the situation is more difficult to figure out if a some eponymism is transparent in English, and therefore it has some lexical connotation, and the case of Russian languge it fails to excite any mental reactions of native speakers who do not link the common phrase and its connotation with a suitable eponym. However, not every eponym leads to troubles. There are some eponyms that are quite straightforward to see through.

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