Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. Vol. 2. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Albert Vermes: Proper names in translation: a case study

of it, by a TL expression which gives rise to the same, or approximately the same analytic implications (explicatures) in the target text; modification consists in replacing the original name with a TL one which involves a substantial alteration in the translation of either the analytic or the contextual implications (implicatures) that the name effects. For further clarification the reader is referred to Vermes (1996). Subsequently, the names in each group were assigned to various types. The types used are the following: names of persons; geographical names; names of institutions and organisations; titles of paintings, books, periodicals, newspapers, etc.; brand names; names of nationalities; names of events; names of periods of time; names of abstract ideas; names of animals; names of species; and the remaining few were collapsed under the heading other names. A full list is given in the Appendix, with the names presumably having an at least partially filled-in logical entry italicised. The validity of the hypothesis was checked by examining under each operation the occurrences of names with or without a filled-in logical entry (Table 1). Under each operation, the number of occurrences in each type was weighed against the total number of occurrences in the given type. This was done to find out whether there are characteristic differences in the treatment of the various types of proper names (Table 2). Then the data were rearranged under each operation in descending order of the percentages within each type to check the extent to which the different operations apply to the various types (Table 3). Finally, individual cases which seem in some sense exceptional were considered with respect to a relevance-theoretic model. 6 Results and discussion 6.1 Implications of the numerical results The numerical findings are summed up in Table 1. The results seem to confirm the validity of our hypothesis: names with an empty logical entry are mainly transferred, while those with at least some logical content are to a great extent translated. The large number of substituted items in both groups should come as no surprise; it is simply due to the fact that several SL names have their established correspondents in the TL, any departure from which would result in an increase in the effort required to process the given utterance. According to the requirement of optimal relevance, this could only be done in special cases when the gains on the effects side would be greater than the losses on the efforts side. 169