Abstract:

The study reports on the research and education of proper names translation at the Institute of Hungarian Linguistics and Literary Science of Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra. It points out that not only lecturers but also university students are involved in translational onomastic research.

The study of the translation of the proper names is interdisciplinary and relies on the outputs of onomastics and translation studies. Proper names are translated from the source language into the target language; the translator must be competent in both the source and target culture. When translating names into another language, the applicable procedures can range from a complete lack of translation to a modification that substantially transforms the name form.

The study examines the translation techniques observed when translating personal names, toponyms (place and street names), and institution names (names of schools, offices, museums, libraries, cultural and health centres) from the source language into the target language in bilingual captions that occur in a bilingual environment. Using examples from a database collected in Hungarian-inhabited settlements in Slovakia, it illustrates the applied translation strategies to transfer proper names from the source language to the target language:
1. transference – lack of translation, leaving the original form of the name;
2. transcription – transcribing the spelling of the source name to the target language;
3. substitution – replacing the name to be translated with the conventional target language equivalent;
4. semantic literal or partial translation – translating the source name or its part with the semantically compatible target language element;
5. full or partial modification – replacing the name to be translated with another name in the target language; changing the proper name to a common name or its paraphrasing; partial modification of the information content of the source language name in the target language by adding (explicitation) or omitting (implicitation) the names.

Keywords:

Interdisciplinary education, onomastics, translatology, proper names, translation procedures, Slovak-Hungarian bilingual environment.