Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. Vol. 1. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 24)

Albert Vermes: On the translation of proper names

translated into the TL. Accordingly, in Hungarian we talk about Oroszlánszívű Richárd and Földnélküli János. Another case is when a historical figure is so well-known in the TL culture that his name has become 'naturalized': Martin Luther must be translated into Hungarian as Luther Márton

, because this variant has established itself as the standard form; but Martin Luther King is never referred to in Hungarian as Király Luther Márton. In certain languages the gender of the person is represented in the name by a particle. For example, in Vietnamese Nguyen-van-An is the name of a man, whereas Nguyen-thi-Tuet is the name of a woman. The infixes -van- and -thi- are markers for the male and female sexes, respectively (examples taken from Elman: 27). Thus, in a way, they are similar to the personal pronouns of languages like English, where these are marked for gender. When these pronouns are rendered into a language like Hungarian, which lacks gender distinction in the pronoun system, we usually do not bother to preserve the reference to gender, unless it is made necessary by the context. Similarly, the most reasonable solution in the case of such names would be to leave them as they are, since the context will probably provide clues as to whether the person in question is male or female. Or, alternatively, the translator may remark in a footnote on the structure of names in Vietnamese if he feels that an explanation is in order. An endless number of examples could be drawn of markers of family relationships in the different languages. Here, however, we will be satisfied with two of them. In the Icelandic language, Olaf Hilmarson is the name of Olaf, who is the son of Hilmar. His father, Hilmar, is the son of Vigus, so his name is Hilmar Vigusson (examples from Elman: 27). The consequences of this case are very much like those of the above mentioned Vietnamese example. Here, too, it is up to the translator to chose from among the possible solutions. It is a well-known fact that in most (if not all) Indo-European languages the given name comes before the family name. In some other languages, however, this order is reversed, as in Hungarian, or Japanese. The translator has to be aware of this in order to avoid misinterpretation of some situation. It could be noted that most of the examples mentioned above have more to do with denotation than with connotation. I would argue, 184