Le Nom Propre en Traduction

Abstract

The proper name is certainly the most enduring vestige of the text's cultural identity in translation since it is frequently directly transplanted into the translated text and is among the elements that lend it its 'foreign flavour'. The reality of practice reveals that this is not always the case and that there are a number of cases when proper names have to be translated by law of usage and others when the translator is in doubt as to which course of action should be taken (or is even at a loss how to render the meaning or connotative effects created by the use of proper names). The treatment of the problem proceeds in three steps: firstly, an account of the definitions provided by linguists; secondly, an investigation into such general principles of translation as can be derived from the observation of current practice; thirdly, an exploration of the frequently overlooked relation between proper names and meaning. Without being heterogenous, the approach is double: it deals both with the problem of proper names such as it appears to professional translators and such as it can be (inadequately) perceived by beginners. The study is based on corpus and error analysis and largely draws on the literature of translation studies.