| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Off topic: Books: Why translate names? Thread poster: Alanna
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Alanna
France
Local time: 09:36
French to German
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TOPIC STARTER | Interesting replies | Sep 24, 2006 |
Wow!
That's been quite a lot of interesting replies!
I hadn't even thought of Asterix when I asked my question, though that would have been a great example (I read them in German and English before getting to French, and I admire the translators for inventing those names!), and I admit that I feel uncomfortable reading Tolkien (or even Michael Ende's Neverending Story) when I come across names I don't know how to pronounce.
Thank you all for your input - t... See more Wow!
That's been quite a lot of interesting replies!
I hadn't even thought of Asterix when I asked my question, though that would have been a great example (I read them in German and English before getting to French, and I admire the translators for inventing those names!), and I admit that I feel uncomfortable reading Tolkien (or even Michael Ende's Neverending Story) when I come across names I don't know how to pronounce.
Thank you all for your input - though I hope this most interesting discussion isn't finished yet!
Alanna,
reading ▲ Collapse
| | | | lidius 
Spain
Local time: 09:36
German to Spanish
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| Thanks, Wenjer and an example of pun's bad translation | Sep 24, 2006 |
Thanks a lot for your answer, Wenjer.
In Spain, the Titel of «Geschichten von Herrn Keuner» is «Historias del señor Keuner», so, the name was not translated, but there is probably a preface in the book, where the meaning of «Keuner» is explained.
About "La señora Fortuna y el señor Dinero" or "La señora Miseria": these are not real names for a person, so I think they must be traslated, of course, like the invented names which have an specific meaning or... See more Thanks a lot for your answer, Wenjer.
In Spain, the Titel of «Geschichten von Herrn Keuner» is «Historias del señor Keuner», so, the name was not translated, but there is probably a preface in the book, where the meaning of «Keuner» is explained.
About "La señora Fortuna y el señor Dinero" or "La señora Miseria": these are not real names for a person, so I think they must be traslated, of course, like the invented names which have an specific meaning or are "nicknames" (Cenicienta, Blancanieves and the moderner Harry Potter, etc.).
A curiosity about the translations of "puns": Oscar Wilde's
"The importance of being Earnest" (Earnest/Ernest) was traslated in spanish with the titel "La importancia de llamarse Ernesto", but "Ernesto" doesn't sound like any adjective which means "earnst", so nobody could understand why it was so important to have this name.
In this page, there is a better explanation (in spanisch)about this curiosity.
"http://www.mundolatino.org/nuestroidioma/ernesto.htm"
Lidia ▲ Collapse
| | | | Wenjer Leuschel (X)
Taiwan
Local time: 16:36
English to Chinese
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| For Better Cultural Understanding | Sep 25, 2006 |
lidius wrote:
About "La señora Fortuna y el señor Dinero" or "La señora Miseria": these are not real names for a person, so I think they must be traslated, of course, like the invented names which have an specific meaning or are "nicknames" (Cenicienta, Blancanieves and the moderner Harry Potter, etc.).
A curiosity about the translations of "puns": Oscar Wilde's
"The importance of being Earnest" (Earnest/Ernest) was traslated in spanish with the titel "La importancia de llamarse Ernesto", but "Ernesto" doesn't sound like any adjective which means "earnst", so nobody could understand why it was so important to have this name.
In this page, there is a better explanation (in spanisch)about this curiosity.
"http://www.mundolatino.org/nuestroidioma/ernesto.htm"
Lidia
Lidia, you are right. "La señora Fortuna y el señor Dinero" and "La señora Miseria" are allegories. Fortuna, Dinero and Miseria are just personifications.
However, those nicknames like Aschenputtel and Schneewittchen have been translated into different languages in different forms to enhance cultural understanding, such as Cenicienta and Blancanieves or in Chinese "Huiguniang (Ash Maid)" and "Baixuegongzhu (Princess White Snow)". I don't believe that the Spanish natives would like to have them in their original for better cultural understanding. I don't believe that English natives would like them to be others than "Cinderella" and "Snow White." And I bleive that this kind of localization helps the globalization of those tales.
As to "Ernesto," the link is interesting. I understand perfectly what the article argues for.
There are a lot of names with meanings in different languages. When they can be pronounced by readers of a certain language, they are usually kept untranslated.
So far I know, Arabic names do usually have meanings. But they are mostly kept untranslated, especially when the names are longer than four syllables, and this practice blocks cultural understanding pretty seriously (ungemein). I would appreciate it very much, if the Arabic translators would translate those name properly into other languages for better cultural understanding.
Of course, once we get into a foreign language deep enough, we wouldn't have problems with original names in that language. But as translators, when we try to introduce them to readers of our own cultures, it is better to translate those names for better cultural understanding.
- Wenjer
[Edited at 2006-09-25 16:04]
| | | | Wendy Cummings
United Kingdom
Local time: 08:36
Spanish to English
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| It interrupts the flow | Sep 27, 2006 |
Taking the level down from the esteemed literary greats that have been discussed above, I remember my first ever encounter of this.
I was 16 and it was my first ever trip to Spain, long before I even knew I wanted to become a translator but after I had started learning the language. I went to the beach and stopped off at a kiosk to buy a book to read. In the holiday mood, I bypassed all the "serious reading" tomes and went for a light-hearted "beach read" novel. I cannot remember e... See more Taking the level down from the esteemed literary greats that have been discussed above, I remember my first ever encounter of this.
I was 16 and it was my first ever trip to Spain, long before I even knew I wanted to become a translator but after I had started learning the language. I went to the beach and stopped off at a kiosk to buy a book to read. In the holiday mood, I bypassed all the "serious reading" tomes and went for a light-hearted "beach read" novel. I cannot remember exactly the topic but it was doubtlessly a teenage romance type book, being 16 as I was at the time.
I sat down to read it, enjoying for probably the first time my ability to read a full book in Spanish. But after the first page I realised it was a translation because there were so many untranslated names. Randy, Joe, Claire etc etc.
I just felt it made the book harder to read somehow, and it removed the enjoyment of being immersed in Spanish - the words, language, grammar and flow, and every time I hit one of these words it pulled me out of my reverie.
Now, many years later, I have to say I lean towards the "translate the names" camp.
Strange how these experiences affect us! ▲ Collapse
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| But what, when going from an alphabetic language to one that is not? | Sep 29, 2006 |
All English names are given Chinese characters that sound pretty much like them when they come into a Chinese translation. This (and I think we can fairly call it localization) has been how we deal with foreign names ever since the first time another culture was translated into ours.
Now, apart from losing the original flavor, the practice poses another difficulty when a translator has to go back to the alphabetic form of an English name. He will always be able to go, say, from 华... See more All English names are given Chinese characters that sound pretty much like them when they come into a Chinese translation. This (and I think we can fairly call it localization) has been how we deal with foreign names ever since the first time another culture was translated into ours.
Now, apart from losing the original flavor, the practice poses another difficulty when a translator has to go back to the alphabetic form of an English name. He will always be able to go, say, from 华盛顿 to Washington, but when what he is dealing with is just the name of another guy and the name is not a very common one like Jack or Tom, he will have real trouble deciding how it is actually spelled. This can be very tricky especially because some English names sound quite like each other and will end up just the same when transliterated.
Maybe it is OK to leave an English name untouched when going into German, but because Chinese is so different it won't be nice to punctuate a text and interrupt the flow (as Wendy puts it) with a bunch of English (or any other European language) names left just as they are.
The way I would like things to be done is to give an English name a transliteration then put the original spelling in brackets right after it for reference's sake. But I don't see this becoming a common practice yet.
[Edited at 2006-09-29 03:43] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Wenjer Leuschel (X)
Taiwan
Local time: 16:36
English to Chinese
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| Naming in Chinese | Sep 29, 2006 |
Hi Huang Shaojie,
Yes, we do have some trouble in transliterating foreign names, even when they are Korean or Japanese which are also partly non-spelling languages. Korean and Japanese pronounce their names quite differently than Chinese would do, though in Chinese characters.
Foreigners who do not have an idea of how Chinese names are made up would have trouble reading transliterated Chinese names. Even someone like me, who read and write Chinese, would have some troub... See more Hi Huang Shaojie,
Yes, we do have some trouble in transliterating foreign names, even when they are Korean or Japanese which are also partly non-spelling languages. Korean and Japanese pronounce their names quite differently than Chinese would do, though in Chinese characters.
Foreigners who do not have an idea of how Chinese names are made up would have trouble reading transliterated Chinese names. Even someone like me, who read and write Chinese, would have some trouble identifying each Chinese character in your name, for example.
However, we are talking about names translated in literature or names in literary translation. As I see it, a piece of literature can be appreciated only when the content is understood.
We wouldn't really care whom the name "Hua Shengdun (华盛顿 Washington)" stands for. He/She could be just anyone like "Hua Guofeng" or someone else. We would read and understand the content first in order to figure out whom the name stands for. We, who read and write Chinese, all know that "Maliya Modala" stands for "Maria Magdalene," "Baixue Gongzhu" for "Snow White," etc., even when we are no Christians or didn't know exactly the origin of those names. Still, we all appreciate the literature of the Bible and of those tales.
Some foreign scholars insist on having proper Chinese names. For instance, Noam Chomsky names himself in Chinese "Hang Shiji (杭士基)" and he wouldn't let us Chinese translators put his name otherwise. This practice doesn't affect the globalization and/or the localization of his thinking in Taiwan, China and Hong Kong.
In Taiwan, we do spell out Western names in brackets behind the transliterated names in Chinese. It is quite common in Taiwan when we translate such books like Jared Diamond's "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" or Richard Dawkins' "The Blind Watchmaker" or Helmut Schoeck's "Der Neid und die Gesellschaft: Eine Theorie der Gesellschaft." But we wouldn't put the foreign names in brackets when translating fair tales or names taken from the Bible, for those names are either already fixed long ago, as in the standard translation of the Bible, or you have to invent some suitable Chinese names for them according to our (tacit) naming rules.
Translating names is an interesting job in Chinese translation market. A good Chinese name helps promoting the product. How would the Westerners appreciate "Keko Kele (Tasty Enjoyable)" or "Baishi Kele (All Enjoyable)" the same way as they do with "Coca Cola" or "Pepsi Cola"? But they are appreciated by Chinese people.
I did some naming jobs for foreign companies. Such jobs are challenging, because you need to know almost all about a name and the product(s) it stands for to invent a suitable Chinese name to achieve the marketing effects specified by the promoters.
Have a nice day!
- Wenjer
P.S. People would wonder why I put your name the other way round. But you know the reason why: We do have our last name first and first name last. The middle name? Well, we don't usually have a middle name. If there is any, that would be an alias.
[Edited at 2006-09-29 19:39] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | What happens when it has to be done | Sep 30, 2006 |
Yes, Wenjer, you are right.
What I was thinking of when I posted that one is actually the possible problem when a name has to translated after all (say, from English to Chinese or the other way round). And the problem, as I said, is that you cannot go back to the original when you need to.
Here may be a news story, in Chinese, you need to put into English. And there is a transliterated name in it, and the person that name refers to is not some famous guy so there is no... See more Yes, Wenjer, you are right.
What I was thinking of when I posted that one is actually the possible problem when a name has to translated after all (say, from English to Chinese or the other way round). And the problem, as I said, is that you cannot go back to the original when you need to.
Here may be a news story, in Chinese, you need to put into English. And there is a transliterated name in it, and the person that name refers to is not some famous guy so there is no way you can tell what his name, as it is spelled out in the original language, is.
The same trouble happens either way. I have heard of this story of a scholar who doesn't realize that Moncious is actually the standard anglicized name for 孟子 and gives it a Chinese translation 孟修斯, which sounds like Moncious but nobody actually is named that.
[Edited at 2006-09-30 04:21] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Wenjer Leuschel (X)
Taiwan
Local time: 16:36
English to Chinese
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| That's why people need us translators. | Sep 30, 2006 |
Hello Shaojie,
Confucius and Mencius are well known. Most people wouldn't have trouble with these names. Laotze, for one, is somehow troublesome. Not many Westerners know about his philosophy, and, if they do and talk about him, we would have some trouble understanding whom they are talking about.
It is quite funny to find out that the Japanese scholar Kenichi Ohmae's name being sometimes translated into Chinese as "肯尼基欧麦 (Kennichi Ohmai)" and sometimes as som... See more Hello Shaojie,
Confucius and Mencius are well known. Most people wouldn't have trouble with these names. Laotze, for one, is somehow troublesome. Not many Westerners know about his philosophy, and, if they do and talk about him, we would have some trouble understanding whom they are talking about.
It is quite funny to find out that the Japanese scholar Kenichi Ohmae's name being sometimes translated into Chinese as "肯尼基欧麦 (Kennichi Ohmai)" and sometimes as something else than "大前研一 (pronounced in Chinese: Daqian Yanyi)" which should be the right name for him as written in Japanese Kanji (汉字 Chinese characters). Such kind of mistakes are not infrequent. This example is a real one I read in a Chinese translation in Taiwan.
You see, that's why people need us translators. They pay us quite often to figure out whom the texts are talking about. And I am glad they do to reward our search and research.
- Wenjer
[Edited at 2006-10-01 04:52] ▲ Collapse
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