Proper Names Translated into Russian.

Translators into Russian usually say that proper names are often transliterated and there is no need to bother translating them from English. It might even be observed in real life. Still, there are quite a few proper names where this rule of thumb does not work.

You may come across some phrases which are in part a kind of proper names and partly a kind of regular words. Eponyms are meant here. Prior to going into this issue of eponymics any further, let us look and find the notion of the word eponym and its derivatives in the science of the language. All words inEnglish and Russian can be grouped into 2 big subdivisions: proper names and appellatives. If you have a grasp of ancient Greek, you could know that the lexical unit “eponym” means “naming” or “giving the name”. In thepast eponyms came into existence from the names of people, heroes or gods to be later used in the names of settlements, local communities, objects and even governmental posts. During this time the actual meaning of "eponym" expanded,as now it meant not only the a name of somebody, but it extended itself to refer to animals or an objects.

These days the linguistic term "eponym" is more often used 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 class of common words with an immediate attribution of metaphorical lexical meaning. Hence, we work with three notions of an eponym:

1. an entity or an object

2. proper name

3. regular word.

When a translator works with an English text, they should guess the background knowledge of the English text intended audience and the level of awareness of the Russian reader. The connotation of eponym arises out of the etymological context. As Russian and English languages have dissimilar etymological background, there are non-similar explanations of how proper namesturn into eponyms. The primary issue related to eponymisms is the subject of their cultural transparency which is a discreet feature that depends on the cultural competence and background awareness of Russian native speakers. There is a question here: how should an interpreter handle eponyms? Undoubtedly such eponymisms as lolita "a sexually attractive young girl" or a superman “a man with exceptional physical or mental ability, with strong integrity" are etymologically understandable both to English and to Russian speakers so making Russian interpretation of them does not cause any issues.

If there is no clear understanding of the context among the people from the two cultures, then all the same the job of an interpreter is pretty easy. (e.g.: Adonis who was named after a attractive young man loved by both Aphrodite and Persephone and killed by a boar, or the game of badminton that got its name from Badminton in SW England, country seat of the Duke of Beaufort, where it was played). However, the issue gets more difficult to figure out if a some eponym is easily understood in English, and hence it features a bit of lexical connotation, and the case of Russian languge it does not evoke any response from speakers who fail to connect the regular word and its connotation with a suitable eponym. However, not every eponym causes problems. There are a number of eponyms which are quite easy to understand.

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