Translating Jedi and Sith. Proper names in early translations of Star Wars novels to German, Polish and Russian

Abstract

The presented paper argues the importance of proper names in fantasy and science fiction in general but focuses primarily on the highly successful Star Wars franchise. Worldwide popularity of George Lucas’ creation resulted in the need of translation of Star Wars materials to other languages. Translators were given a task, among others, of creating a glossary of proper names essential to the overall story, including such as Jedi and Sith. This paper is an analysis of translation of these proper names in Star Wars novels released before the year 2000 in German (61), Polish (39) and Russian (18). It presents all variants proposed by the translators before the final one was canonized and comments on their choices and used strategies. The analysis shows that while German and Polish translators usually retained use of previously established versions, Russian translators proved to be less consequent in this matter.

Keywords

• proper names
• proper names in fantasy
• translation of proper names
• star wars
• popular culture