Eponimical linguistic parts of the language as the object of Russian translation.

Translators into Russian usually say that proper names are often simply given letter by letter rather than translated from English. Moreover, as observations show it is actually put into practice. Nevertheless, there is a special kind of proper names that are not subject to this rule or are subject to in only in part.

One instance are expressions thatare partially made of a proper name and there are also regular words. Here we speak of eponymic vocabulary. Though prior to defining those limits as well as other complex issues connected with eponymous expressions that appear in Russian translated texts, it is vital to give a bit of attention to the notion of the eponym and the way it works in linguistic terminology. The array of all words in both English and Russian is divided into 2 big categories: appellatives and proper names. If you speak ancient Greek, you may know that the lexical unit “eponym” means “naming” or “giving the name”. In theearly days of history eponyms came into existence from the names of real people, heroes or gods to be later used in the names of cities, local communities, objects and even positions of power. As the time passed, the notion of “eponym” grew wider to include not only the personal name, but the name of the denoted object as well.

Currently, linguists employ the term “eponym” to refer to a word that has stopped working as a proper name and now works as a regular common noun. Therefore, we deal with 3 individual elements of an eponym:

1. being or object

2. proper name

3. regular word.

When a translator deals with an English text, they should assume the background awareness of the English text intended audience and the degree of awareness of the Russian reader. The meaning of eponymism is built on stereotypical associations concerning a concrete, particular eponym and having the nature of encyclopedic connotation. As Russian and English languages have different etymological background, there are non-similar explanations of how proper namesturn into eponyms. Linguistic competence of an audience determines the level of clarity of an eponym. Then there is a question: should the Russian translator take into consideration such problems? A number of eponyms have a common cultural context which makes translators job easy, for instance “superman” or “Lolita”.

If there is no clear understanding of the connotation among the people from the 2 cultures, then again the task of a translator is pretty easy. (e.g.: Adonis named after a beautiful youth adored by both Aphrodite and Persephone and murdered by a wild boar, or badminton that got its name from Badminton in SW England, Duke Beaufort’s country seat, where it was played). However, the issue gets more sophisticated if a certain eponymism is easily understood in English, and therefore it has some lexical connotation, and the case of Russian languge it fails to excite any response from speakers who fail to connect the regular phrase and its connotation with an appropriate eponym. Evidentely, not every eponimism causes troubles. The phrases that are non-transparent, do not lead to any difficulties to Russian speakers.

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