FICTION NAMES OF ENGLISH MEDIA DISCOURSE: PECULIARITIES OF TRANSLATION (СASE STUDY: TV SERIES "ONCE UPON A TIME")

Abstract

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of translating English fiction names of modern American TV series into Ukrainian and Russian. The object of study is translation of proper names. The subject is the translation of fiction names from English into Ukrainian and Russian. The study was based on M. Kochergan’s classification, where 12 groups of proper names are differentiated, fiction names are among them. Fiction names are one of the greatest challenges for a translator. The research revealed that fiction names were translated by means of the following methods: transcoding, transcription, adaptation, calque and finding equivalents. Isolated usage of transcoding in the process of translating fiction names is very rare. The study found out that transcoding and calque were used most frequently and served as a means of creating adequate translations. But, sometimes it was not efficient for a translator to omit etymology and connotative meaning of a fiction name, and as a result, the audience of the translated version of the TV series does not receive a comprehensive understanding idea of a character, which can cause a misunderstanding of the whole picture. In order to create an adequate translation it is very important to assess the function of a fiction name, the peculiarities of the genre and the style of the text, the literary traditions in the cultures of the source and target texts, the epoch when the source text was created and the role of the character in the national literature. Thus, we think that a translator is to trace the etymology of a fiction name in order to find a proper equivalent in the target language. The question of the admissibility-inadmissibility of the use of domestication in the translation of fiction names remains open and disputable. If a fictional name is a speaking name (it may be used to characterize a whole class of people), calque should be used. In other cases we should give preference to transcoding.