Personal names in technical translation

Abstract

Personal names in technical translation

This paper sets out to demonstrate that despite their seemingly slight relevance to technical translation, personal names have a major influence on the end product of the translation process. Personal names are not normally translated but transliterated or slightly modified to fit the target language as much as possible. Technical translators do not need to draw a boundary between proper names and common names, identify an individual known by various names or a single name borne by several people, nor decide whether a name belongs to a real or fictitious person. By contrast, they often have to ascertain: the base form of personal names in inflectional and agglutinative languages; their pronunciation for correct declension subject to vowel harmony, if any; the order of given names and surnames for inversion as necessary; the first and last item of multi-element names; the namebearer’s nationality for correct spelling, and their sex for gender agreement, including pronouns and verbal suffixes. The paper ends with the proposal that the behaviour of personal names in technical translation should be the subject of corpus-based research.