Translating Proper Nouns

This handout will give you some pointer about how to deal with the proper nouns (the words that Page | 1 are used to designate specific people, places, institutions, companies, events, historical periods) that appear in a ST. Linguistically speaking, a distinction can be made between proper nouns (a single word) and proper names (a string of words/ noun-phrase).

In addition to the points noted below, remember that there are certain differences at grammatical level between proper nouns in English and in French (for example, use of capitalisation, use of the article).

TRANSLATING GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

The French essayist, Montaigne, writing in 1580, expressed his frustration that contemporary historians writing in Latin would latinise the French place names appearing in their texts:

I have often wished that such as write histories in Latin would leave our names as they find them and as they are; for in making Vaudemont into Vallemontanus, and metamorphosing names to make them suit better with the Greek or Latin, we know not where we are, and with the persons of the men lose the benefit of the story. (Chapter XLVI, Book the First: Of Names)

However, it remains common practice for translators to do precisely that: to use an exonym in place of the ST place name. An exonym is a geographical name used in one language to designate a place which lies outside of the territory where that language is the official language. It is different to the name applied locally to the location. So for example, Florence is the English exonym used for the city known to Italians as Firenze, while Allemagne is the French exonym of the land known to its own inhabitants as Deutschland. The opposite of an exonym is an endonym: the geographical name used within the territory.

When you come across a place name in an ST, then, it seems easy enough to switch it for the relevant exonym. Let us take the example of Côte d'Ivoire, a West African country whose official language has been French since it was a French colony (1898-1958). The English exonym for this country is Ivory Coast, the Portuguese one Costa da Marfim, the German Elfenbeinküste, and so on. So an English translator could select Ivory Coast. However, in this case, an ethical dilemma is raised. In 1986, the country issued a declaration stating that its name for diplomatic purposes would be Côte d'Ivoire, officially requesting that any other exonym not be used.1

Similarly, the former Portuguese colony we frequently refer to as East Timor would prefer to be known by its chosen Portuguese-language designation Timor-Leste, and is indeed identified as such by organisations such as the United Nations and the World Bank. Although try telling the BBC!

A good point of reference, when making your decision, is the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN): "UNGEGN's goal is for every country to decide on its own nationally standardized names through the creation of national names authorities or recognized administrative

1 A Political Chronology of Africa (2001) London: Europa. In the main library: JQ 1870 P

processes." (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/ungegn/ ). UNGEGN lists the 'English short name' for the West African country discussed earlier as Côte d'Ivoire, and the 'English formal name' as the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire.

TRANSLATING PERSONAL NAMES – real people Page | 2 Hervey and Higgins (2002: 31-33) argue that dealing with personal names constitutes one of the more straightforward translation challenges: "There are two main alternatives in dealing with names. The name can be taken over unchanged into the TT, or it can be adapted to the phonic/graphic conventions of the TL". See also Ballard (2001).

When translating the names of real people (for example, in a journalistic, historical, or legal text), strategy 1 will usually be the most appropriate, with occasional recourse to strategy 2. See comments below:

. Names containing accented letters. It is not unusual to find that these lose their accents when transcribed into English. If you perform an archive search in the Telegraph (for example) for France's disgraced former budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac, you will find that practices vary from article to article.

. Monarchs, popes, saints, key historical figures, etc, will often have accepted variant equivalents (Moses in English becomes Moïse in French, Jerome becomes Girolamo in Italian, the Corsican Napulione becomes Napoléon in French but loses his acute in English, and so on). [The same is true for key events and historical periods: the English Civil War/ la Guerre civile anglaise, the Renaissance/il Rinascimento, the Victorian era/ Viktorianisches Zeitalter, etc. - put this in a footnote] However, it isn't always the case: Marie Stuart becomes Mary Queen of Scots, but Marie (originally Maria) Antoinette doesn't change and nor does Victoria.

. A particular issue for French/English translators can be the use of the nobiliary particle (the preposition that can form part of a surname). Examples include: Simone de Beauvoir, Valérie Giscard d'Estaing, Charles de Gaulle, Dominique de Villepin, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. o IN FRENCH: when such figures are referred to by surname alone, the preposition is, rather confusingly, either always (De Gaulle) or never included (Villepin, Saint-Exupéry). In the case of Simone de Beauvoir, her name is nearly always written out in full. Where the preposition is included, it can be capitalised or not (la réputation de de Gaulle, les conférences de presse de De Gaulle). o IN ENGLISH, the particle is traditionally included, regardless of the practice in French. The Guardian, for example, refers to De Villepin, De Beauvoir, De Gaulle. The New York Times seems to prefer to include a title as a courtesy (Mr. de Villepin, Ms. de Beauvoir, although in the latter case, Beauvoir is also used). As a rule of thumb, check both the common usage in the target language, and the convention of your target publication.

. Pluralisation of names. Where in English, we add an S when referring to a family group, this is not the case in French: les Soprano, les Simpson, les Giscard d'Estaing. The exception is dynastic names, which are pluralised in the usual way in both languages: les Tudors, les Capets, les Bonapartes.

TRANSLATING PERSONAL NAMES - in fiction When translating the names of fictional characters, the same two basic strategies will often suffice. Simply transferring the names across will help to, as Rabassa puts it, "maintain a certain aura of the original tongue and its culture" (2005: 14).

However, if for example you are translating a text with two characters named Hugo and Brunhilde Page | 3 from German into Spanish, you risk creating a cultural dissonance if you simply transfer the names across: Hugo is also a Spanish given name, whereas Brunhilde is not. It might therefore be prudent to rebaptise Hugo with a Germanic name bearing no Hispanic overtones. [I once read an article by a translator faced with precisely this dilemma - I can't for the life of me track it down, but I’ll be eternally grateful to the first person who enlightens me]

Further difficulties arise if the personal names are loaded rather than conventional, to borrow Hermans' terms (1988). The latter carry some sort of 'semantic load', possibly involving word play, or alluding to the character's personality in some way.

Hermans lists four key strategies for translating names; the first two will be perfectly fine for conventional names, whereas the second two will be called upon when greater creativity is required in the case of loaded names:

1. "They can be copied, i.e. reproduced in the target text exactly as they were in the source text."

2. "They can be transcribed, i.e. transliterated or adapted on the level of spelling, phonology, etc."

3. "A formally unrelated name can be substituted in the target text for any given name in the source text."

4. "And insofar as a (…) name in a source text is enmeshed in the lexicon of that language and acquires ‘meaning’, it can be translated." (1988: 13)

Strategy 3 can be employed when the effect of cultural transplantation is desired. The 2012 BBC series The Paradise, an adaptation of Émile Zola's Au Bonheur des Dames moved the action from Paris to the north of English. The characters' names were changed, albeit preserving a few nods in the direction of the French source (Denise remains the same, but her surname changes from Baudu to Lovett; Octave Mouret becomes John Moray) and so on.

A similar approach is adopted by the English translator of the Belgian cartoon Tintin. Some names are transliterated to make them more easily pronounceable (Szut becomes Scut; Tchang-Tchong Jen becomes Chang-Chong Chen). Meaningful names involving wordplay (Professeur Tryphon Tournesol, Dupond et Dupont) are adapted (Professor Cuthbert Calculus, Thomson and Thompson). Others are entirely transplanted: Milou the dog becomes Snowy.

Sometimes, the word-play is simply too embedded and language-specific to find a simple, creative solution. In Hugo's Les Misérables, the student revolutionary group Les Amis de l’ABC causes particular problems. The name of the association itself is a pun on the French word l'abaissé, the abased. Two characters within the group have names that cause considerable difficulties for the translator: Joly, pronounced Jolllly (“Tu peux t'envoler sur quatre L, lui disait Jean Prouvaire”, where ‘L’ stands for ‘ailes’: you can fly away on four wings/Ls), and Grantaire, whose name is

represented by the rebus R (‘grand R’ = capital R). English translations I have seen either ignore the puns completely, thus mystifying the unwitting reader, or offer a prosaic explanation in parentheses. It is difficult to see what a more creative solution might look like, without changing the names entirely.

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Bibliography:

HERMANS, T. (1988) “On Translating Proper Names, with reference DJ 71 M to De Witte and Max Havelaar”. In: M.J. Wintle (ed.) Modern Dutch Studies. Essays in Honour of Professor Peter Kings on the Occasion of his Retirement, 1-24, London/Atlantic Highlands: The Athlone Press BALLARD, M. (2001) Le Nom propre en traduction. Paris: Orphyrs PC 2498/B RABASSA, G. (2005) If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Available via Google Dyscontents. New York: New Directions books