Translation of Names in Children’s Fantasy Literature: Bringing the

Young Reader into Playi

Lincoln Fernandes
Pós-Graduação em Estudos da Tradução, Brazil

ABSTRACT
This paper discusses the translation of names in children’s fantasy literature and highlights the
importance of names in translating this particular text type. First, it defines what it is meant by
“names” and attempts to present some of the most important types of “meanings” usually
conveyed by names. Then, it discusses the issue of readability in the translation of these
narrative elements. Next, building on Hermans’s (1988) ways of rendering names from L1 to
L2, it offers a classification of ten translation procedures that were identified in the
Portuguese-English Parallel Corpus of Children’s Fantasy Literature, namely PEPCOCFL.

KEYWORDS: children’s fantasy literature, names, readability.

There is a widespread disposition that names should be

transposed unchanged in textual writings (…). Indeed, a naive
or inexperienced translator (…) may look forward to the proper
names in a text as islands of repose – unproblematic bits to be
passed intact without effort into the new linguistic texture being
created – translated in the sense of carried across the language
gap without alteration, in the sense that a saint’s relics are
translated from one resting place to another (Tymoczko 1999:
223).

1 Introduction
The idea of names as “islands of repose”, as criticized by Tymoczko (1999) in the epigraph to this
paper, sounds like a romantic belief held by innocent minds. In fact, there is more to the treatment
of names than such “disposition” would lead us to believe. As Nord (2003: 182) has pointed out,
just a quick glance at translated texts can reveal that translators do all sorts of things with names;
such as substitute, transcribe and omit them. In highlighting the problems concerning the
translation of names, scholars usually subsume the issue under a discussion of culture-specific
references, where names are seen as culture-specific items (CSIs)ii and as such are approached in
terms of the complexity of translating cultural patterns (see Aixelá 1996; Tymoczko1999; and
Davies 2003). Although the issue of cultural specificity in the translation of names is undeniable,
there are also other aspects of names that should be taken when translating them. This paper
discusses the theoretical issues in translating names based on the role these names play in literary
works, with a special emphasis on children’s fantasy literatureiii, where names have a fundamental
role in creating comic effects and portraying characters’ personality traits, which will often guide
the reader throughout the plot of the story (see subsection 3.1).

New Voices in Translation Studies 2 (2006), 44-57. 44

Before I go on to discuss some of these roles, I will contextualize and define what I understand by
“names”, focusing on the functional aspect that these elements may have in a literary piece of work.
Then I will offer a classification of ten translation procedures that were identified in The
Portuguese-English Parallel Corpus of Children’s Fantasy Literature (PEPCOCFL).

2 Contextualisation and Definition of Names

According to Crystal (1997: 112), the science that studies names is known as onomastics (Greek
onomastikos from onoma ‘name’), usually divided into the study of personal names
(anthroponomastics from Greek anthropos ‘human being’) and place names (toponomastics from
Greek topos ‘place’). In more popular usage, the term onomastics is used to refer to personal names
and toponomastics for place names. The division is ultimately an arbitrary one, as places can be
named after people (e.g. Alberta in Canada is named after the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria,
Princess Louise Caroline Alberta) and vice versa (e.g. Israel is also used as a first name). As most
name studies fall under one of these two major headings, other categories of names (e.g.
institutions, objects and food) are usually excluded from this categorisation. Thus, in order to avoid
such tendency the term ‘name’ is preferred instead, since it encapsulates all categories of names.

The special nature of names is often described in terms of the differences between proper nouns
and common nouns; however, it is outside the scope of this paper to present a full account of the
issue (for a detailed discussion, see Marmaridou 1991). Suffice it to say that a proper noun is
interpreted here as “the name of a specific individual or of a set of individuals distinguished only by
their having that name” (Matthews 1997: 300). The name “Griphook”, which is applied to a
specific goblin in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling or “Bri” which is
applied to one specific talking horse in The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis are examples of
proper nouns. A common noun, on the other hand, is a name whose “application is not restricted to
arbitrarily distinguished members of a class” (Matthews 1997: 61). For instance, a goblin or a
horse is a common noun that may be used in reference to any individual characterisable in general
as a goblin or a horse. Things start getting really complicated when a common noun is turned into a
proper noun, and this is exactly what happens, for instance, in The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S.
Lewis, where the animal characters in the story are named according to the category of living
creatures they represent (e.g. The Beaver, The He-Owl, The Bulldog).

This is another reason why I prefer not to use the term proper name, since there are times when the
distinction between common and proper gets blurred, thus being of little or no usefulness for the
isolation of the narrative elements being investigated. For the purposes of this paper, names are
thus defined as the word(s) by which an individual referent is identified, that is to say, the word(s)
whose main function is/are to identify, for instance, an individual person, animal, place, or thing
(see Nord 2003: 183). In this sense, names possess a certain deictic quality in that they point
directly to a single, concrete referent; however, sometimes they may also acquire a semantic load
which takes them “beyond the singular mode of signification” (Hermans 1988: 12). Therefore,
names are viewed as mono-referential – they refer to a single entity – but not as mono-functional,
since they may function as carriers, for instance, of semantic, semiotic, and/or sound symbolic
meanings in literary works. This issue is further explored below.

New Voices in Translation Studies 2 (2006), 44-57. 45

3 What do Names Convey in Children’s Fantasy Literature?
It has already been observed that names in literary works are often used to convey a message to the
reader (Marmaridou 1991). In fact such works seem to operate on at least two levels of
communication. One is the “level in text” at which some narrative elements of the novel
communicate with one another. The other level is that “between the author of the work and the
reader and somehow operates above the text” (Marmaridou 1991: 88). It is at this above-text level
that names can function to convey semantic, social semiotic and sound symbolic meaning(s)
directly from the writer to the reader in relation to, for instance, a character, place, or object being
referred to in the narrative. Let me now briefly discuss these three important types of meaning
separately in order to obtain a clear grasp of what type of information names usually convey in
children’s fantasy literature.

3.1 Semantic Meanings

In semantic terms, names have a prominent role in children’s literature where they usually have
their meaning potential activated in order to describe a certain quality of a particular narrative
element and/or create some comic effects. The former situation is typically found in the allegorical
tradition where, for instance, a character’s personality is summed up by their name, where
characters are seen as “personifications of either vices [or] virtues or of general qualities relevant to
human life” (Manini 1996: 165). In fact, personal names have been frequently used in literary
narratives as dense signifiers in the sense that they may contain in themselves clues about the
destiny of a character or indications of the way the storyline might develop. The surname “Fowl” in
the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer is a good example. Fowl /faul/ has the same pronunciation
as the English word “foul” /faul/, which means “morally polluted” or “treacherous” (The Concise
Oxford Dictionary 1964/1995). This semantic meaning, in turn, gives the reader an idea of what
they are about to expect from the members of the Fowl family, which has its maximum expression
in the figure of Artemis Fowl, the anti-hero and master-mind of crime in the story.

As regards comic effects, Embleton (1991) has already pointed out that names in children’s
literature rely on many disparate techniques for their humour, but much of their comic effects
derive particularly from pun and double entendres (Embleton 1991: 175). The name of a magical
creature in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Hagrid’s pet hippogriff “Buckbeak”,
exemplifies this other aspect of semantic meaning. The name “Buckbeak” is formed by analogy
with “bucktoothed”, which in turn humorously describes one of the most prominent physical
attributes of such a creature. Therefore, translators of children’s literature not only need to face the
usual problems of translating semantically-loaded names, but also the problem of retaining such
comic effects.

3.2 Semiotic Meanings

From a semiotic perspective, names in many cultures act as signs, generating ancient or more
recent historical associations (e.g. Ptolemy, Archimedes, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), indicating
gender (e.g. female: Hermione, male: Ronald), class (e.g. Sir Nicolas De Mimsy-Porpington),
nationality (e.g. Carlo Montana and Marco Andretti are typically Italian names), religious identity
(e.g. David and Gabriel are biblical names), intertextuality (e.g. Sherlock Holmes), mythology (e.g.

New Voices in Translation Studies 2 (2006), 44-57. 46

Banshee, Centaur, Unicorn) and so on. According to Tymoczko (1999), names are often the
semiotic elements of a text that are most urgent and at the same time the most problematic to be
translated, especially due to their semiotic significance which is often culture-bound (Tymoczko
1999: 224). In this sense, the difficulties in translating names are related to the complexity of
translating cultural patterns as mentioned above. Aixelá (1996) views some proper names as CSIs
because their historical or cultural associations transform them into dense signifiers which
translators need to deal with so as not to overload the information flow of the translated text (Aixelá
1996: 59). In children’s literature, for instance, this overload may induce the child reader to stay “at
a distance” and miss the message underlying the plot; for this reason some translators opt for
setting the story in the receiver’s own cultural world instead of a strange and exotic world that
sometimes the source culture may represent, thus enabling a young readership to identify such
message. As an illustration, Nord (2003: 185) mentions one of the Brazilian translations of Alice in
Wonderland, “where all the culture markers, including proper names, are consistently adapted to
the target culture”.

However, it is important to stress that names conveying semiotic meaning do not always present
obstacles to translation. After all some of these names may have an international character, in the
sense that they are conventionally adopted by the target culture in the same form as that of the
source culture (e.g. King’s Cross Station, Oxford, Big Ben are the same in Brazilian Portuguese).
Additionally, sometimes some names exist in the same form both in the source and target culture,
and this way are kept despite their changes in pronunciation (e.g. En: Mabel, BrPort: Mabel).
Moreover, the long tradition and continuous use of such names contributes to their high degree of
integration into the lexical systems of many languages, which perhaps might have been one of the
driving forces behind the emergence of exonyms. Exonyms are names “by which one people or
social group refers to another and by which the group so named does not refer to itself”
(Answers.com). Examples of exonyms between Portuguese and English are Pedro ↔ Peter, Tiago
↔ James, Inglaterra ↔ England and Londres ↔ London, and, as observed by Nord (2003), such
names do not pose a problem for translation due to their conventionalized nature, that is, translators
have at their disposal a number of conventionalized forms that they may either use or not (Nord
2003: 184).

3.3 Sound Symbolic Meanings

According to Matthews (1997), sound symbolism refers to “the use of specific sounds or features
of sounds in a partly systematic relation to meanings or categories of meaning” (Matthews 1997:
347). Among the typological significations that sound symbolism subsumes, there are two worth
mentioning here: imitative sound symbolic meaning and phonesthetic meaning. Imitative sound
symbolic meanings are related to the use of onomatopoeia. An imitative sound symbol represents a
sound actually heard, but its actual component speech sounds may only vaguely resemble the
imitated sound (Shisler 1997). Some examples of imitative sound symbolic meaning can be found,
for instance, in names such as “Madame Norris” (a cat in the Harry Potter series),
“Breehy-hinny-brinny-hoohy-hah” (a horse in the Chronicles of Narnia Series), and
“Rumblebuffin” (a giant, also, in the Chronicles of Narnia Series), which attempt to imitate
respectively the angry hiss and growl of a cat, the whining of a horse, and the booming voice of a
giant. Imitative sound symbols often have component phonesthetic sound symbols. Phonesthetic
meaning has to do with the use of sound symbolic elements called phonesthemes. A phonestheme
is a sound, sound cluster, or sound type that is directly associated with a meaning (Shisler 1997).
New Voices in Translation Studies 2 (2006), 44-57. 47
The initial cluster /gl/, for instance, occurs in the following words: glisten, glow, glare, glent,
glimmer, glimpse, glister, glitter, glim, and because they share the same common denominator /gl/,
they are usually associated with “light” and “shining”. Another example is the initial cluster /sl/
which can be found in words such as slime, slug, slithery, slobbery, slog, and they are usually
connected with “unpleasantness”. In Harry Potter the name of Salazar Slytherin – the founder of
the ill-reputed Slytherin house in Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft – follows this
phonesthetic pattern, thus showing how useful such a concept can be to understand some patterns
of naming. The shared cultural response to a phonestheme is called phonesthesia, and the study of
phonesthemes and phonesthesia is called phonesthetics.

Having briefly discussed some of the semantic, semiotic, and sound symbolic meaning(s) that
names usually convey, I would now like to focus on an important issue that translators usually have
to tackle in translating children’s literature, namely that of readability.

4 Readability and the Translation of Names in Children’s Literature

Puurtinen (1995) suggests that the presence of many foreign names and an abundance of unusual
phonological sequences or even rare spellings in a translation bring with it the risk of creating
linguistic barriers for young readers. Name forms such as “Nguyen Xuan”, “Walden McNair”, and
“Ahoshta Tarkaan” clearly illustrate how unfamiliar phonology and/or orthography can pose
obstacles, for instance, to Brazilian young readers who may not identify with them, and which in
turn may cause a backlash against the reading development of these kids. Lia Wyler (2003), the
translator of the Harry Potter series in Brazil explains why the title-role name of the series could
not be adapted to the Brazilian Portuguese phonological and morphological system:

Giving native names to characters contributes to children’s positive/negative identification with them, so
this is the current procedure in translating for children. Young Brazilians who are not yet proficient in
reading find English words difficult to pronounce. By contract, however, Harry Potter’s name could not
be altered, even if children had to struggle to pronounce an aspirated “h” and retroflex “r’s” – an ability
found only in seven out of twenty-six states in Brazil (Wyler 2003: 12).

Another interesting point concerning readability is that names have to be memorable if they are to
fulfil their primary function of referentiality. According to Tymoczko (1999), the referential
function of names presupposes a certain “recognizability” and “memorability”, that is to say,
names must in “some way be memorable so as to serve their function as indicators of unique
objects” (Tymoczko 1999: 225). In order to fulfil this function, a name itself must have a certain
uniqueness in context that makes it distinct from other names, and it is easy to see that unfamiliar
foreign names with unusual phonology and orthography can interfere negatively with
memorability as it becomes hard for the receptor audience to “keep the names straight in literary
works” (Tymoczko 1999: 226). In other words, in order to facilitate the memorability of a name to
a young audience, translators are usually expected to deal with foreign names in a way which
enables young readers to recognize them according to the phonological and orthographic
conventions of the target language. Therefore, in addition to serving as identifying labels and
conveying semantic, semiotic and sound symbolic meanings, names must in some way be readable
so as not to alienate children from reading.

New Voices in Translation Studies 2 (2006), 44-57. 48

The readability of a name is a complex multilevel phenomenon, as names must be analysed at
various levels (i.e. orthographic, phonological, semantic, etc). Moreover, the reading process of a
name cannot be understood only as a linear decoding of meaning which resides in the structure of
such a name. Name structure and meaning are not fixed but dependent on the context in which they
are inserted and on each individual reader. In other words, the readability of a name varies in
accordance with the interaction between its structure, referentiality, significance, and the reader’s
background knowledge (cf. Spiro et al. 1980). In the case of young readers, readability is likely to
require more attention due to their developing decoding skills and smaller functional memory
capacity (Adams 1980: 12-13). A full discussion of the factors and strategies involved in
readability is unnecessary in the present paper; only a few basic assumptions pertaining to
translation have been presented so as to give the reader a general idea of the importance of
readability in the translation of names. A comprehensive discussion on readability can be found in
Pearson et al. (1984), Spiro et al. (1980) and Van Dijk and Kintsch (1978)iv. In the next section, I
concentrate on the translation of names and show some of the things that translators usually do
when translating names in children’s literature.

5 Translation of Names in Children’s Literature

From a translational perspective, names can be broadly divided into two categories (i) conventional
names and (ii) loaded names (see Hermans 1988: 88). Conventional names are those seen as
‘unmotivated’ for translation, since they apparently do not carry a semantic load; their morphology
and phonology do not need to be adapted to that of the target language system; or perhaps because
they have acquired an international status (e.g. Minerva, Heathrow and Westminster). Loaded
names, which are those seen as ‘motivated’ for translation, range from faintly ‘suggestive’ to
overtly ‘expressive’ names and nicknames. They include those fictional and non-fictional names in
which historical and cultural inferences can be made on the basis of the ‘encyclopaedic
knowledge’v available to the interlocutors of a particular culture. The distinction between them is
one of degree: expressive names link with the lexicon of the language (e.g. “Butler” in the Artemis
Fowl series, “Dark Stranger” in The Worlds of Chrestomanci, and “Strawberry” in The Chronicles
of Narnia), and hence the semantic load of the name is more in evidence than in the case of
‘suggestive’ names (e.g. “Voldemort” in the Harry Potter series, “Throgmorten” in The Worlds of
Chrestomanci, and “Maugrim” in The Chronicles of Narnia]). According to Hermans (1988),
theoretically speaking there appears to be at least four ways of rendering names from one language
into another:

They can be copied, i.e. reproduced in the target text exactly as they were in the source text. They can be transcribed,
i.e. transliterated or adapted on the level of spelling, phonology, etc. A formally unrelated name can be substituted in
the target text for any given name in the source text (…). And insofar as a (…) name in a source text is enmeshed in
the lexicon of that language and acquires ‘meaning’, it can be translated (Hermans 1988: 13).

Hermans goes on to explain that various combinations of these “modes of transfer” are possible
and that deletion of a source-text name or the insertion of a new one is also a possible translation
procedure (Hermans 1988: 14). These different ways of translating names are interpreted by
Hermans (ibid.) in terms of the relationship between Target Text (TT) and Source Text (ST) along
two poles of a continuum: adequacy vs. acceptability. According to Toury (1995), a translation is
termed adequate when the translator makes an attempt to follow source rather than target linguistic
and literary norms. On the other hand, a translation is termed acceptable when the translator has
New Voices in Translation Studies 2 (2006), 44-57. 49
adhered to those norms of the target system (1995: 56-57). In this respect, when translators, for
instance, copy a foreign name into the TL text they are apparently privileging adequacy, and when,
for instance, they transcribe or substitute a foreign name in the translated text they are apparently
favouring acceptability. As a matter of fact, there are times when copy cannot be interpreted as a
procedure based on adequacy in the case, for instance, of “bicultural” names (see Nord 2003: 185)
where the same name form exists in both source and target cultures (e.g. Portuguese: Jane, English:
Jane). Moreover, in the case of transcription, there are names that, despite being transcribed in
order to conform to the phonological and morphological conventions of the target language,
continue sounding alien to the target audience and recognized as not belonging to the target cultural
setting (e.g. Batilda Bagshot ↔ Bathilda Bagshot in the Harry Potter series). Therefore, an effect of
adequacy may be achieved by either preserving a foreign name, but also by creating a new name
not present in the source text, and while the addition of some explicit clarification of a name may
make the target text more accessible, so may the deletion of this particular name. In view of this, as
Davies (2003) has already observed, there seems to be no clear correlation between the use of a
particular procedure and the degree of adequacy or acceptability obtained in the target text.

Building upon Hermans’ classification of the ways onomastic material is handled in order to
produce an appropriate translated text, I propose a set of ten procedures in the translation of names
based on information extracted from PEPCOCFL – The Portuguese-English Parallel Corpus of
Children’s Fantasy Literature. PECOCFL is a bilingual electronic parallel corpus which consists of
24 fantasy books (12 originals + 12 translations) extracted from four English fantasy series
translated into Brazilian Portuguese in the period between 2000-2003.

5.1 Rendition

This is a “coincidental” procedure and is used when the name is transparent or semantically
motivated and is in standardized language (see Newmark 1988: 75), that is, when the name in a
source text is enmeshed in the lexicon of that language, thus acquiring “meaning” to be rendered in
the target language (Hermans 1988:13). Examples of rendered names are shown below.

TT ST
A Mulher Gorda tinha saído para fazer uma visita The Fat Lady had gone on a night-time visit and
noturna e Hermione ficou trancada do lado de fora da Hermione was locked out of Gryffindor Tower.
torre da Grifinória. (Harry Potter)

Gato lembrava-se do órgão tocando e das pás da grande Cat remembered the organ playing and the paddles
roda girando no céu azul. beating the blue sky.
(The Worlds of Chrestomanci)

The table shows that the main procedure for translating motivated names like the ones above is that
of rendition. It is curious to observe, though, that the translator of the Harry Potter Series opted for
translating the word “Lady” into “Mulher”, which means “woman” in Brazilian Portuguese. This
goes to show that the translator has freely chosen the use of a “superordinate” (woman) instead of a
more specific word such as “senhora” or “dama” (= lady).

5.2 Copy

New Voices in Translation Studies 2 (2006), 44-57. 50

This procedure bears resemblance toVinay and Darbelnet’s (1995) concept of “borrowing” as the
simplest type of translation (Vinay and Darbelnet 1995: 31). In this procedure, the names are
reproduced in the translated text exactly as they appear in the source text without suffering any sort
of orthographic adjustment. Some examples of copied names are displayed below.

TT ST
Harry Potter era um bruxo – um bruxo que acabara de Harry Potter was a wizard – a wizard fresh from his
terminar o primeiro ano na Escola de Magia e Bruxaria first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and
de Hogwarts. Wizardry.
(Harry Potter)
Aos treze anos o objeto, de nosso estudo, Artemis By the age of thirteen, our subject, Artemis Fowl, was
Fowl, mostrava sinais de um intelecto muito superior showing signs of an intellect greater than that of any
ao de qualquer ser humano desde Wolfgang Amadeus human since Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Mozart. (Artemis Fowl)

It is interesting to observe that the procedure of copy is used with the name of the protagonists of
the two series above. This is perhaps due to copyright issues in which such names are seen as
“brands” or “commodities” and as such they are usually kept unchanged in the TL (see Gehringer
2004). From a phonological perspective, however, Nord (2003: 187) points out that these names
often acquire a different pronunciation in the TL. For example, in the name Artemis, which is the
name of the Greek Goddess of Hunt, the stress is placed on the second syllable in Brazilian
Portuguese [ar’temis] and on the first syllable in British English [‘a::temIs]. Therefore, despite
being copied, these names often acquire a different character in the target context.

5.3 Transcription

This is a procedure in which an attempt is made to transcribe a name in the closest corresponding
letters of a different target alphabet or language. In other words, this procedure occurs when a name
is transliterated or adapted at the level of morphology, phonology, grammar, etc., usually to
conform to the target language system (see Hermans 1988: 13). The use of the term “transcription”,
however, is different from that made by Newmark (1988:75) in the sense that the latter uses
“transcription” as a synonym for “adoption”, “transfer” or “loan-words”, whereas in this study
“transcription” is seen in the light of Aubert (1994: 64-68) as a synonym for “transliteration”.
Examples of transcribed names are displayed below.

TT ST
Quando voltei, apareci no meu quarto, onde a outra I got back to my bedroom, and the other girl – she's
menina, que na verdade se chama Romília, estava called Romillia really – had been writing her diary. She
escrevendo em seu diário antes de ser arrastada de lá no got called away in mid-sentence and left it lying there,
meio de uma frase. so I read it.
(The Worlds of Chrestomanci)
Assim posto, ela persuadiu o meu pai a prometer-me And so she persuaded my father to promise me in
em casamento a Achosta Tarcaã. marriage to Ahoshta Tarkaan.
(The Chronicles of Narnia)

The apparent unmotivated names “Romillia” and “Ashosta Tarkaan”, with their graphological
forms alien to a Brazilian audience, have been transcribed into “Romília” and “Achosta Tarcaã”
respectively. In transcribing these two names, the translators have marked the stress in Brazilian

New Voices in Translation Studies 2 (2006), 44-57. 51

Portuguese by means of an acute accent and a tilde. Additionally, they have also suppressed, added,
and changed the position of letters, probably as a way to preserve the readability of the text in the
TL context.

5.4 Substitution

In this type of procedure, a formally and/or semantically unrelated name is a substitute in the target
text for any existent name in the source text (see Hermans 1988: 13). In other words, the TL name
and the SL name exist in their respective referential worlds, but are not related to each other in
terms of form and/or semantic significance (see examples below).

TT ST
Jamais vira o menino. Talvez fosse Ernesto. Ou He'd never even seen the boy: It might have been
Eduardo. Harvey: Or Harold.
(Harry Potter)
Mas a velha ficou pensativa. – Até Aquenaton voltar... But the old woman looked thoughtful. ‘Richard of
eu conheço isso. Artemis também conhecia. Era York… I know that.’ Artemis knew it too. It was
praticamente todo o código verbal de detonatação da virtually the entire verbal detonation code for the fairy
granada sônica do Povo das Fadas que estava sonix grenade magnetized to the underside of the table.
magneticamente presa em baixo da mesa. Um dos One of Butler’s little security devices. All they needed
pequenos equipamentos de segurança de Butler. Eles só was a mom word and the grenade would explode,
precisavam de mais uma palavra e a granada explodiria, sending a solid wall of sound charging through the
lançando uma sólida parede de som pelo prédio, building, blowing out every window and eardrum.
explodindo cada janela e cada tímpano. (Artemis Fowl)

It is interesting to note that the translator of the Harry Potter series not only replaced the two SL
names (i.e. Harvey and Harold) with two unrelated names in the TL (i.e. Ernesto and Eduardo), but
also took into consideration the alliteration (i.e. the use of the same letter or sound at the beginning
of words that are close together) present in the original. The translator of the Artemis Fowl series in
turn opted for replacing the name of the historical figure “Richard of York”, which is a mnemonic
device to help remember the colours of the rainbow (“Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain” – Red,
Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet), with “Aquenaton” (a Brazilian exonym for
Akhenaton/Akhenaten), a Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt, which does not have any
association with the word “arco-íris” (= rainbow). This association is very important in the story as
the word “rainbow” is the verbal detonation code for the grenade, but it has not been retextualized
in the translated text.

5.5 Recreation

This type of procedure consists of recreating an invented name in the SL text into the TL text, thus
trying to reproduce similar effects of this newly-created referent in another target cultural setting. It
is important to stress that recreation differs from substitution in the sense that in recreation the
lexical item does not exist in the SL or in the TL.

New Voices in Translation Studies 2 (2006), 44-57. 52

 TT ST
– Bem, a goles, a bola vermelha meio grande, é a que Well, the Quaffle – that's the biggish red one – is the
faz os gols. one that scores goals.
(Harry Potter)
O Sr. Olivaras chegara tão perto que ele e Harry Mr Ollivander had come so close that he and Harry
estavam quase encostando os narizes. were almost nose to nose.
(Harry Potter)

The procedure of recreation was mostly found in the translations of the Harry Potter series where
these neologisms are very common. Moreover, it is important to note that the name Quaffle, which
is the name given to one of the balls used to play Quiddich, has not been capitalized in Brazilian
Portuguese. This decision is in line with the Brazilian grammar rule in which the name of objects
are not usually capitalized. The invented surname Mr Ollivander, whose referent owns a shop that
sells magical wands in the story, has been recreated by transcribing (Oliv- / Olliv-) and rendering
(-vara/-(w)and), thus resulting in the harmonious and humorous form Senhor Olivaras.

5.6 Deletion

This procedure is usually considered a rather drastic way of dealing with lexical items, but even so
it has been often used by translators (see Baker 1992: 40-42). Deletion (Ø) as a translation
procedure involves removing a source-text name or part of it in the target text. It usually occurs
when such names are apparently of little importance to the development of the narrative, and are
“not relevant enough for the effort of comprehension required for their readers” (Aixelá 1996: 64).

TT ST
Ø 'Bet it's that one behind the statue of Gregory the
Smarmy that we found in our first week. See you.'
(Harry Potter)
Naquela época vivia em Londres uma garota que se And in those days there lived in London a girl called
chamava Polly. Polly Plummer.
(The Chronicles of Narnia)

In the examples above, one can see that the full name Gregory the Smarmy and the surname of one
of the main characters in the Chronicles of Narnia were apparently of little importance to the
story’s plot development. And as such these names were (partially) deleted by the translators of the
two series in question.

5.7 Addition

This is a procedure in which extra information is added to the original name, making it more
comprehensible or perhaps more appealing to its target audience (see Giles’s (1995) “framing
information”). Sometimes it is used to solve ambiguities that might exist in the translation of a
particular name. Examples of added names are displayed below.

New Voices in Translation Studies 2 (2006), 44-57. 53

 TT ST

– Sr. Pintarroxo, seria capaz de nos dizer para onde Then she turned to the Robin and said, "Please, can you
levaram Tumnus, o fauno? (BT: Mr Robin) tell us where Tumnus the Faun has been taken to?
(The Chronicles of Narnia)
Falou o Sr. Castor, finalmente: – Bem, em nome de "Well?" said the He-Beaver at last. "What, in the name
Aslam, quem são vocês? of Aslan, are these ?"
(The Chronicles of Narnia)

Addition was a procedure detected only in The Chronicles of Narnia, where titles of address were
added to the name of animals in order to disambiguate their sexual identity, since in Portuguese the
majority of these names have just one form for both male and female (e.g. castor – he-beaver or
she-beaver).

5.8 Transposition

This procedure is defined as the replacement of one word class with another without changing the
meaning of the original message (Vinay and Darbelnet 1995: 36). For Chesterman (1997), this
procedure also involves structural changes, “but it is often useful to isolate the word-class change
as being of interest in itself” (Chesterman 1997: 95).

TT ST
Harry Potter e a Pedra Filosofal (adjective) Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (noun)
(Harry Potter)
Artemis Fowl - Código Eterno (adjective) Artemis Fowl – The Eternity Code (noun)
(Artemis Fowl)

The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1964/1995: 1462) defines titles as distinguishing “names” given
to – among other things – “books”. As such these narrative elements play an important naming role
in literature, since they denominate and identify specific individual works. Because of this
particular role played by titles, I have decided to include them in the analysis of names. The
procedure of transposing nouns into adjectives in the titular units above show that the translators
tried to anchor these units in the target context by producing more acceptable translated titles. After
all, this procedure could have been replaced with another more commonly used and equally
available procedure, namely rendition.

5.9 Phonological Replacement

This is a procedure in which a TT name attempts to mimic phonological features of a ST name by

replacing the latter with an existing name in the target language which somehow invokes the sound
image of the SL name being replaced (see Kelly’s (1979) “phonemic translation” and Catford’s
(1965) “phonological translation”). Phonological Replacement must not be confused with
transcription (see subsection 5.3). The latter involves adaptation of a SL name to the
phonology/morphology of a target language while the former involves the replacement of a SL
name with a TL name which is phonemically/graphologically analagous to it. Examples of this
procedure are shown below.

New Voices in Translation Studies 2 (2006), 44-57. 54

 TT ST
“Muito misterioso. E agora, com Jorge Mendes, o 'Most mysterious. And now, over to Jim McGuffin
nosso boletim meteorológico. Vai haver mais with the weather. Going to be any more showers of owls
tempestades de corujas hoje à noite, Jorge?” tonight, Jim?'
(Harry Potter)
– Ouvi você falando da coitada da Murta – disse ‘Heard you talking about poor Myrtle,’ said peeves, his
Pirraça, os olhos dançando. – Que grosseria com a eyes dancing. ‘Rude you was about poor Myrtle.’
coitada. (Harry Potter)

Phonological replacement is a procedure detected especially in the translations of the Harry Potter
series, whose translator seems to resort frequently to this kind of procedure. The examples above
show that names apparently unmotivated were replaced with names that have a similar orthography
and phonology.

5.10 Conventionalityvi

This final procedure occurs when a TL name is conventionally accepted as the translation of a
particular SL name. It is commonly used with names of historical/literary figures and geographical
locations. These conventionalized names in the target language are usually referred to as exonyms
(see Section 3.2).

TT ST
E Arquimedes, o matemático grego. And Archimedes, the Greek mathematician.
(Artemis Fowl)
– Mas não foi um sucesso. A esposa dele fugiu para a "But it was not a success. His wife ran off to Sicily with
Sicília com um bruxozinho ensebado. a greasy little warlock."
(The Worlds of Chrestomanci)

The examples above show that a historical and a geographical name in the source texts (i.e.
Archimedes and Sicily) were replaced with two conventionalized forms in the target culture,
namely Arquimedes and Sicília. By and large, historical and geographical names do not usually
pose a problem to Brazilian translators, since they usually have a wide array of conventionalized
forms (exonyms) for these kinds of names at their disposal. Finally, it is important to say that
combinations among all the procedures described above are possible, as names can be rendered,
copied, transcribed, or substituted and deleted (e.g. Larva Kelp – Grub Kelp; Lili Fronde – Lili
Frond; Polly – Polly Plummer).

6 Conclusion
In this paper I have attempted to show that names in the translation of children’s literature cannot
be seen as “islands of repose” as they are often loaded with some sort of meaning. In other words,
they may act as semiotic and sound symbolic signs indicating a wide array of socio-cultural
information to the reader. In Tymoczko’s words, “they are dense signifiers, signs of essential
structures of human societies” (1999:223). Based on this assumption, I have discussed some of
these different types of meaning that names can convey and have also stressed the relevance of the
readability factor when translating names in children’s literature. I showed what translators usually
do with names and the way names in children’s fantasy stories are usually translated in the

New Voices in Translation Studies 2 (2006), 44-57. 55

Brazilian context. However, although these procedures describe the way names in children’s
fantasy literature are translated in Brazil during a certain period of time, there is no reason to
believe that these procedures are language-pair-specific. In principle, this set of procedures could
provide a useful conceptual tool to analyse and report the way translators usually deal with a
particular literary element (i.e. names).

Author’s address
lico.fernandes(a)gmail.com

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Notes

i
This paper is based on the author’s unpublished PhD thesis entitled Brazilian Practices of Translating Names in
Children’s Fantasy Literature: A Corpus-based Study, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, 2004.
ii
For Aixelá (1996: 58), CSIs are “textually actualized items whose function and connotations in a source text involve
a translation problem in their transference to a target text, whenever this problem is a product of the non-existence of
the referred item or of its different intertextual status in the cultural system of the readers of the target text”.
iii
This paper focuses on one particular subgenre in children’s literature, namely fantasy. Although fantasy is one of
the many subgenres in children’s literature which uses ‘unreal elements’ in its narratives, what makes it different from
other subgenres which also use these elements (such as the folk tale, fairy tale, and animal stories) is that while these
other subgenres assume magic in the same way that the realistic novel assumes its absence, fantasy does not. When
fantasy incorporates an unreal element, “that element, far from being assumed, is fantastic relative to the realistic
aspects of the work” (Knowles and Malmkjær 1996: 17), that is to say, “fantasy is a story based on and controlled by an
overt violation of what is generally accepted as possibility” (Irwin 1976: ix cited in Knowles and Malmkjær 1996: 224).
In this sense, fantasy portrays some obvious deviance from consensus reality which according to Hunt (2001) is
usually provoked by violations of the laws of nature (Hunt 2001: 271). As an illustration of these violations, one could
possibly mention flying broomsticks, talking creatures and self-refilling plates.

iv
For a general review of the various formulae used to measure readability, the following studies can be a useful point
of departure: Davison and Kantor (1982), Zakaluk and Samuels (1988) and Klare (1974). In the context of translation
research, Puurtinen (1995) introduces some psycholinguistic concepts related to readability and evaluates the pros and
cons of some readability testing methods in the investigation of syntactic patterns in translated texts.
v
According to Matthews (1997: 114), encyclopaedic knowledge is the “knowledge of the world as distinguished from
knowledge of the language system”.
vi
I would like to thank Dr. Stella Tagnin for suggesting the use of the term and showing me the necessity of refining
the categories employed in the classification of procedures belonging to the model herein proposed.

New Voices in Translation Studies 2 (2006), 44-57. 57