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

Another example, which is probably the most famous in the Hungarian literary tradition is the name of the teddy bear protagonist in Milne's classic children's book, Winnie-the-Pooh

, which was translated by Frigyes Karinthy as Micimackó. In the technical sense of the word, it is not a translation of the original at all. What the translator did here was change the original SL name to a TL name which is not a literal equivalent of the SL item, but evokes the image of a funny and lovable teddy bear just as the SL name does in the SL text. Furthermore, the translation also preserves the contradiction which arises from the fact that although Pooh is a male teddy (or, at least, considered as such by Christopher Robin), the names he bears (Winnie and Mici) are girls' names in both languages. We shall now move on to consider a few problems in connection with geographical names. One is that they are subject to alterations due to the ever-changing political and social situations, and therefore the translator has to be extremely careful in selecting the appropriate TL item. It is very much a matter of taking a political stand, for instance, whether a translator chooses to render the Slovak name Kosice into Hungarian as Kassa or decides to leave it in its original SL form. Or, to take another infamous example, it is not the same if we write Auschwitz or Oswiecim (example taken from Newmark: 216), though both refer to the same location in Poland, since the two words have very different connotations. Then there are also geographical names which have become 'naturalized' in the TL, like Bécs

, the Hungarian equivalent of the German name Wien. Here the translator has usually no choice, unless for some very good reason concerning the cultural halo of the word, but to use the form that is conventional in the TL. Finally, let us consider the names of objects. These include names of institutions, periodicals, proprietaries, etc. These are generally left in their original SL forms. Occasional exceptions can be justified on the ground of the connotations a particular SL word may evoke in the TL culture if left unchanged. Newmark mentions the interesting case of 'Mist' hairspray (Newmark: 215), the name of which translates into German as 'filth'. Not a really lucky name for a hairspray, one would think. In this case, therefore, it would seem desirable to change the name when introducing the product in Germany. The irony of the example is that in actual fact the hairspray was introduced in Germany with the original name 'Mist' and still it is 186