Ha van Bicska Maxi, miért nincs Égjáró Lukács?

Abstract

If Bicska Maxi exists, where is Égjáró Lukács? Translating meaning in literary names The study offers a review of the strategies employed in the translation of charactonyms from literary works, comic books, and live-action, puppet, and cartoon movies written in foreign languages in Hungarian literary translations, subtitles, and dubbed texts. The approximately 300 names in the corpus are organised according to the categories set out by J. Soltész: signalling names (names with obscure etymologies) and word names (names with discernible origins). These can come into contact in four ways: (1) signalling name → signalling name, (2) signalling name → word name, (3) word name → signalling name, and (4) word name → word name. Based on the analysis of these types, translators perform about 20 different operations, from preserving names unaltered to the literal translation of names. Some of these methods can be classified into several groups. Thus, future research should compare the results with the typology outlined by Vermes, and research should be extended to translations with Hungarian as a source language.