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
world, resulting in an additional increase of processing effort with readers who are familiar with it. Thus the translator's decision seems to be justified here on two grounds. He avoids putting the TL reader to extra processing effort by being consistent both within the world of the given text and within a wider universe of discourse including this and related texts. This then goes to show that calculations of contextual effect and processing effort involve, apart from considerations of prevailing translation practices in the TL, not only textual but intertextual factors as well. The other names in the second subgroup include some geographical, institutional and brand names, which are again normally either transferred or substituted in the general Hungarian practice. The two animal names, Princess and Spot , are probably not translated in order to avoid incongruity with a world predominantly containing English names in the Hungarian translation, which is all the more logical since the two dogs do not have any significant role to play in the story. 6.2 Discussion of modified items Now let us turn our attention toward the modified items. 12 of them have an empty logical entry, 11 an at least partly filled-in one, which suggests that the translator's decision to modify the expressions could not be based on the presence or absence of some logical content alone. We find four personal names here. Mutt and Jeff are rendered in the TT as Zoro and Huru. The reason is obvious: in the SL Mutt and Jeff have in the encyclopaedic entry associated with them the assumption that they form a comic couple and since it is not present in the TL, the names had to be changed for ones that will carry a comparable assumption. A similar explanation would go for Joe College , rendered as Tudósjános (Scholarly John) and possibly for Wild Bob , rendered as Félelmetes Bob (Frightful Bob). Of the two geographical names, Stamboul occurs in a small poem and is turned into Törökhon (Turkey) simply to make two lines rhyme. A similar example is the nationality expression Polack, which is explicated in the TL as lengyel nő (a Polish woman). It appears in the last line of a ditty, cited in the book, and is probably used instead of the literal translation lengyel purely because of reasons of rhyme and rhythm. The other geographical term, Russia, becomes az orosz front (the Russian front) in the translation, explicating in the logical entry what was part of the encyclopaedic entry of the original. Why this change had to take place is not entirely clear. On the one hand, the TL expression makes it explicit what was implicit as part of the context in the SL, thereby reducing the inferential effort required; 171
