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

instead of the logically closer britek. Why? The reason is very simple: the word brit does not have wide currency in Hungarian, except in a historicopolitical context. By using this term the translator would have deviated from standard Hungarian usage, thereby increasing the processing cost of the utterance, which he wisely avoided, applying the admittedly less precise but more commonly used term angol. The Febs is the name of an amateur vocal quartet of men in the book and is turned into a NŐK (The WOMEN). It is difficult to see what encyclopaedic assumptions the translator sought to preserve here; the only one that seems apparent is that the name was meant to be jocular in some way. In summary, the modification of an item is generally made necessary by the absence of some encyclopaedic assumptions in the TL which the name carries with it in the SL and the absence of which from the target text would result in the loss of some relevant contextual implications in the given context. We have also seen two exceptional cases where the modification takes place for prosodic reasons. 6.3 Frequency of use of the four operations with the various types of name Finally we shall check out whether there are any characteristic differences in the frequencies of use of the four techniques with the various name types. The relevant numbers and percentages are given in Table 2. TYPE NUMBER TRANSFER NUMBER : % SUBSTITUT. NUMBER : % TRANSLAT. NUMBER

:% MODIFICAT. NUMBER : % PERSONAL 97 71 : 73.2 19 : 19.6 3:3.1 4:4.1 GEOGR. 93 39 : 41.9 50 : 53.8 2 : 2.15 2 : 2.15 INSTITUTE 48 9 : 18.8 12:25 21 : 43.7 6 : 12.5 TITLE 31 2 : 6.45 8 : 25.8 19 : 61.3 2 :6.45 BRAND 18 7 : 38.9 2 : 11.1 6 : 33.3 3 : 16.7 NATIONAL. 9 0:0 7 : 77.8 0:0 2 : 22.2 EVENT 8 0:0 7 : 87.5 1 : 12.5 0:0 TEMPORAL 7 0:0 6 : 85.7 0:0 1 : 14.3 OTHER 7 0:0 0:0 4 : 57.1 3 : 42.9 ABSTRACT 6 0:0 6: 100 0:0 0:0 ANIMAL 2 2:100 0:0 0:0 0:0 SPECIES 2 0:0 2: 100 0:0 0:0 TOTAL 328 130 : 39.6 119 : 36.3 56 : 17.1 23:7 Table 2. The data are arranged in descending order of the number of occurrences of the different types. This number is taken as 100% in each case; the percentages in each line under the various operations are relative to this. 173