Peculiarities of Rendering of English Tell-Tale and Pun Names in Translations Of T. Pratchett’s Books

Abstract

The relevance of our research is based on the growing popularity of the fantasy comedy genre. Since modern readers are more and more interested in foreign literature, translators are faced with the task of creating an adequate translation that will accurately reproduce the personal style and all the elements of a separate universe created by an author, as well as convey the meaning that the author puts in his works to his readers. Since the main feature of Terry Pratchett’s personal style is the use of pun and tell-tale names in his works, thus arises the question of proper translation of this particular vocabulary. This work is devoted to the study of the culture of English proper names, mostly pun and tell-tale names; and analysis of translation choices for such vocabulary in the works of Russian translators. The dominance of the semantic translation method is determined by extensive use of occasionalism in Pratchett’s works. As for transcription/transliteration or their mixing — the translator uses them if he doesn’t see any meaning behind a particular character name. In some cases, it is possible to talk about the creative component of the translated text, about bringing a translator’s personality to the novel. This individuality does not distort Pratchett’s personal style and his original solutions, which appear in translation. The purpose of this work is to analyze the linguistic and stylistic specificsof proper names translation techniques in a series of fantasy comedy «Discoworld» from English into Russian. The paper presents an analysis of the specifics of the interpretation of pun names taking into account difficulties and cases where the translation does not match the original. The results of the study will help to avoid possible difficulties in the future and find new ways to solve them. This will help to optimize the quality oftranslation, which in turn will lead to an improvement of the quality of the final product.