Eponimical lexical items as the object of Russian translation.

It is generally said that Russian texts are made from English texts in such a way that the proper names in most cases are not translated but transliterated. It may even be seen in real life. Still, there is a particular breed of proper names that are not subject to this rule or are subject to in only in part.

You may come across a number of word combination which are in part a sort of proper names and partly a kind of common words. Eponyms are implied here. Though before setting the limits of the kind as well as various related complex questions dealing with eponymic expressions functioning in Russian translations, it is necessary to pay a bit of attention to the notion of the eponym and how this term functions in the language of linguistics. All words inboth English and Russian can be grouped into 2 big chunks: proper names and appellatives. If you have a grasp of ancient Greek, you might know that the word “eponym” means “naming” or “giving the name”. In theearly days of history eponyms came into existence from the names of people, war heroes or deities to be later used in the names of towns, tribes, objects and even governmental posts. In the period of a couple of centuries, the meaning of “eponym” expanded to include not only the personal name, but also other objects that shared some metaphorical similiarity.

These days the word "eponym" is more often employed when you refer to common phrases that have been singled out in a language on the principle of displacing one word from the category of proper names to the category of regular words with an immediate allocation of metaphorical lexical meaning. Therefore, we work with three separate elements of an eponym:

1. being or object

2. proper name

3. common word.

Therefore, the Russian interpreters while translating eponymisms have to deal with the problem of developing an instant hypothesis about the encyclopedic awareness of users of the English text and the audience of their Russian text. The connotation of eponym arises out of the cultural context. As Russian and English languages have different etymological past, there are non-similar explanations of how proper namesbecome eponyms. The primary issue connected with eponymisms is the subject of their out-of-context transparency which is a hidden feature depending on the linguistic competence and background knowledge of Russian native speakers. There is a question here: in what way should a translator handle eponyms? Surely such eponymisms as lolita "an underage sexually attractive lady" or a superman “a man with exceptional physical or mental ability, with strong integrity" are obviously understandable both to English and to Russian speakers so performing Russian interpretation of them does not lead to any issues.

The same thing applies also to the eponymisms that have lost their clarity in both English and Russian. (e.g.: Adonis named after a handsome guy adored by both Aphrodite and Persephone and killed by a wild boar, or the game of badminton named after Badminton in the South West of England, country seat of the Duke of Beaufort, where people started playing it). Nevertheless, the issue gets more sophisticated if a some eponym is easily understood in English, and hence it features some lexical implication, and in the Russian language it fails to evoke any response from speakers who do not link the regular phrase and its lexical meaning with an appropriate eponym. However, not every eponimism leads to troubles. You will obviously come across some eponyms that are pretty transparent to understand.

Article Source: http://www.majorarticle.com

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