The Translation of Proper Names in Children's Literature: The Case of Harry Potter in Greek
Date Issued
February 1, 2021
Type
Διδακτορική Διατριβή
Abstract
The present thesis investigates the translation potential of proper names in children’s literature through the analysis of the translational patterns of proper names from English into Greek. By focusing on the translation of the subgenre of the fantasy novel and adopting a functional approach, the main concern of this study is to unravel the translation procedures employed in the treatment of names of literary characters. The case study is the first book in the famous Harry Potter series entitled Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
More specifically, a new name taxonomy is proposed where names are envisaged as multidimensional entities consisting of a thematic, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic dimension. Bringing to the fore the thematic and pragmatic dimensions and in particular, focusing on the pragmatic element of whether names are real or fictive, the thematic categories of characters’, animals’, places’, objects’ and events’ names emerge and are further subdivided according to their real or fictional side and then they are linked with their translation potential through the detailed exploration of name-type and the translation procedure of two hundred and twenty-four instances of proper names. The results indicate that in terms of thematic category, character names had the biggest percentage and in terms of translation procedure, transcription was the preferred procedure of almost all name-types.
It is concluded that the extensive use of the translation procedures of transcription and literal translation could be claimed to seriously affect the functions of the SL proper names. However, the main argument put forward in this thesis is that the translator through the extensive use of conservation translation procedures has managed to fullfil other equally important functions, thus bringing to the fore both the micro- and macro-context of proper names which should not be considered solely as linguistic units but primarily as multi-dimensional entities encompassing both linguistic and extra-linguistic information.
Subjects