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Значение имен собственных в произведениях Джоан Роулинг "Гарри Поттер"

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1.1Introduction

What’s in my name to you?..

Alexander Pushkin

Onomastics* (1, 4) is the branch of linguistics studying proper names: names of people, animal, countries, rivers, mountains, human settlements. (Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English*) (3)

Using of meaningful or so-called “speaking” names in literature is a well-known stylistic device. Having appeared in classical literature of the 18^th century as characters’ definition, it has become one of the basic methods of modern literature. Nowadays names play a very central and important role in every literary text and so would certainly the names given to characters are of importance to readers. Decoding of the names becomes an important engagement as it helps the reader in its deciphering of the text in which the names are.

Relevance of the problem. Proper names in literature are used to achieve a number of goals like encoding the central trait in a particular character’s signification, embracing crucial thematic motifs, ideological toning as well as even showing the particular writers point of view. Some of these qualities are easily lost in translation, something that is captured in the formula traduttori tradittori (latin:“translators are traitors”) (4)

I first noticed the problem while I was reading “Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince” by Joan Rowling. It was a book translated into Russian by Maria Spivak* (10). I noticed that all proper names in the book were different to those in the first three parts that I had read before. After a short research I found a simple explanation of the strange fact. All proper names in Harry Potter are meaningful or “speaking”. English-speaking readers, due to cultural background, can easily understand the “secret” meaning of each name. But for Russian readers, whose cultural code is different to the English, the secret meaning is not obvious. So the difference of the proper names in various translations of Harry Potter is just an attempt of deciphering.

As a result I made the following questionnaire:

Have you read Harry Potter in English or in Russian?

Do proper names in Harry Potter have “secret” meanings?

Can you explain the meaning of any name from the book?

I asked my classmates to answer these questions and received the following answers:

In Russian

No, not all. Some of the names may have hidden meanings, but they are few.

The names that have meanings are Petunia, Nearly Headless Nick and Moaning Myrtle.

It was obvious that my classmates had missed the major part of the author’s message just because they had read the book in translation.

The problem of the project: Is it possible to convey the writer’s message to Russian readers?

The object of the research: Harry Potter, the series of books written by Joan Rowling

The subject of the research: proper names.

The aim of my work is to explain the hidden meaning of the proper names used in Harry Potter books.

Tasks:

1) To study the terms: “speaking” names, Onomastics, basic methods of proper names translation;

2) To find out the real meaning of all proper names used in Harry Potter series of books by Joan Rowling;

3) To create an Explanatory Dictionary of Proper Names, that can help Russian readers to reveal the hidden meaning of the proper names used in Harry Potter books.

Reading a book is always interesting. It takes you to a wonderful world of imagination. But learning to understand the idea of the book, its creative concept is really valuable.

Stages of the project

Logistics (Material and technical supplies)

1.2 Modern methods of translating proper names in children’s literature

Translation of children's literature is a significant area of study, due to the fact that books for children have always been written by real authors at real places in different languages, and they have been and still are read, in translations into other languages, in all over the world. As a result of internationalism and multiculturalism, children's literature is translated into languages more increasingly, which means that the translated works need to be adapted to the young reader's language in every instance. Russia is one of the importers of foreign children's literature which has many young addresses. One of the questions which usually arise in translation for children is whether proper names should be translated or not. A famous linguist Jan Van Coillie's* (2) has created a model of translating strategies of proper names in children's literature. According to the model there are several ways of translation:

Reproduction: leaving a foreign name unchanged;

Non translation plus additional explanation: adding explanations, either in the form of a note or in the text itself;

Replacement of a name by a proper noun: replacing a proper name by a common noun that characterizes the person;

Phonetic or morphological adaptation of the name: turning to phonetic transcription or morphological adaptation;

Exonym: replacing a name by a counterpart in the target language;

Replacement by a more widely known name from the source culture or an internationally known name with the same function;

Substitution: replacing a name by another name from the target language;

Translation of names with a particular connotation: reproducing the connotation in the target language, when names have specific connotations;

Replacement by a name with another or additional connotation: adding or changing the connotation of a name;

Deletion: omitting all the proper names.

The actual choice of strategy the translator makes depends on a variety of factors. In making their choices, translators are guided by their own frames of reference, the total sum of their knowledge, experiences, ideas, norms and values.

(See appendix No.1)

2. Basic Part

2.1 Proper names in “Harry Potter” and their classification

Harry Potter, the work of an English writer Joan Rowling about a wizard boy is, perhaps, the most famous book of the last decades. Many children and adults read books about Harry Potter and I am not an exception. It is my favorite book and I know many episodes by heart.

The book describes a magical world of wizards and witches. To make it realistic to the reader the author created and thoroughly depicted not only the main characters of the book, but a large number of minor characters. And each of them has a name. Did author named them randomly or did she want to give her readers the keys to the characters’ nature and role in her book?

As usual, when a writer names a character of his book, he is usually aimed at giving his readers some important details of the characters personality or nature.

But what about Harry Potter?

For English-speaking readers the answer is obvious. Due to cultural background they can easily understand the “secret” meaning of each name. But we need an explanation.

At the beginning, I decided to write down all the proper names from the book and analyze them. I have noticed that all names mentioned in Harry Potter books can be divided into several groups in connection with their role in the book.

So I made the following table:

2.2 Compiling the Explanatory Dictionary

2.2.1 Information database

Using this classification I started to collect information for each group of the names, decoding them.

Some of the names were easy to unscramble. For example, names like Petunia, Fleur and Rimus. It was easy to understand their meanings without any etymological dictionaries. I just look them up in botanical encyclopedia* (13).

“Petunia” comes from the French word petun, meaning "tobacco", a beautiful plant that blossoms and smells nice, but in fact it is poisonous and harmful. It is exactly like Petunia Dursley in the book. She seems to be as kind and nice as her sister Lily, but inside she is cruel and evil.

“Fleur” means “blossoming, beautiful”. It is a perfect name for Harry’s first love, isn’t it?

“Remus” is a well-known herbicide, a weed killer that is widely used in agriculture to kill weeds in vegetable gardens. The name Remus connected with the last name “Lupin” (a plant which is highly resistant to cold, drought and diseases) makes its owner a real threat to evil powers.

The other names were very hard to unscramble. The most difficult name was the name of Harry Potter, the main character of the book. At first glance it seemed to be so simple and meaningless that I even thought that it didn’t have any “secret” meaning. But I was wrong. This is what I found out (8,11,15,16):

The name Harry as a reduced form of Anglo Saxon name ‘Henry’ , which means ‘power’, ‘master of the house’. Now we can easily understand why, Harry was thought to be the heir of Godric Griffindor , the founder of the Harry’s faculty. Another possible option is the name ‘Harryson’, which means ‘commander’.

At the same time, we can refer to the verb ‘to harry’-‘harassing’, ‘annoying’. This may be due to the fact that Mr. Potter, by his existence, irritates many evil characters in the book. “Harried” that is how the English call a person who has got lots of work or who is constantly distracted.

I don’t think that Harry’s name should be understood in this way, even though he leads a rather tense life. What is more important is that Harold is consonant with the word herald (‘messenger’).So Harry is a messenger of something new and better.

If we look at the surname Potter more closely, we can see that Harry inherits something more than the wealth and pedigree of his father.

‘Potter’ is a fairly common English surname, which means ‘a man who makes pots’. Nothing special, if you don’t take into consideration the fact that lots of ancient gods are called “potters”, and that pottery is the first thing that people learned from them. This, undoubtedly, gives a certain nobility and greatness to the main character, although the verb ‘to potter’ can mean ‘loitering’, that explains Harry’s attitude towards learning.

It is also important to mention that the word potter is pronounced in the same way as the word ‘pater’ –father in Latin.

If we look at both names (the first and the last) together, we will see ‘the heir of god’ or ‘god’s messenger’. Symbolic, isn’t it?

In a while I had enough material to create my dictionary.

2.2.2 Writing Dictionary articles

When I had enough information for my dictionary, I started to shape it in the proper form.

At first I determined the type of my future dictionary. It would be an explanatory dictionary.

“Explanatory dictionaries - provide information on all aspects of the lexical units entered: graphical, phonetical, grammatical, semantic, stylistic, etymological, etc. Most of these dictionaries deal with the form, usage and meaning of lexical units in Modern English, regarding it as а stabilized system and taking no account of its past development (from Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English*) (3).

While you are compiling a glossary or a dictionary there are rules you should follow. Here they are:

1. Give a short definition of the word

2. Determine the part of speech

3. Determine a grammatical function of the word

4. Find synonyms and antonyms

5. Give examples of the word’s usage

6. List the words in alphabetical order* (12,14)

These rules did not suit me as all the words in my dictionary were proper names. That is why I decided to follow the only one rule – I arranged all the articles in my dictionary in the alphabetical order.

Then it was necessary to decide on the language of the dictionary. At first I planned to make it in English. But as it was made for Russian readers who would read Harry Potter in Russian translation it was decided to create the dictionary in Russian.

Later, when I tested my dictionary on children aged 9-10 it became clear that the decision was right. They enjoyed the dictionary and used it while reading Harry Potter. (See Appendix 2)

But as I have already mentioned above proper names in Russian translations differ a lot. Some of the characters had two or even three variants of names in Russian (for example: Дарсли – Дурслей, Снеп – Снейп – Снегг). In order to bring the names of the characters as closer to their real, “hidden” meaning, the translators used all possible ways of translation. Here are the examples of

Reproduction:

Гарри Поттер for Harry Potter

Гермиона Грейнджер for Hermione Granger

Exonym:

Златопуст Локонс for Lockhart Gilderoy

Substitution:

Суверус Снегг for Severus Snape (‘snape’ means ‘sudden cold’)

To avoid any possible mistakes and misunderstandings it was decided to use the proper names taken from the official Russian edition of Harry Potter made by Rosmen Publishing.

It was also decided to add the original name of the character. As a result, an article from my dictionary shaped in the following form:

The final stage of the work was to make my dictionary colorful and bright. The layout of the dictionary was made in PowerPoint (See Appendix 3). After that it was converted to publishing software files and printed.

Conclusion

I have completed the tasks of my project:

I studied the terms: “speaking” names, Onomastics, basic methods of proper names translation.

I found out the real meaning of all proper names used in Harry Potter series of books by Joan Rowling.

I created an Explanatory Dictionary of Proper Names, that can help Russian readers to reveal the hidden meaning of the proper names used in Harry Potter books.

The approbation of the Dictionary on students aged 9-14 shows that it helps the readers to understand the book better. So the problem of the project is solved.

The Dictionary that I have compiled can be used as a supplementary reading for those who have already read Harry Potter, as well as a supporting reading for those who starts reading the book. The dictionary gives cultural, linguistic and historical background information for the reader and increases the level of cross-cultural knowledge. To my opinion it can be a useful tool for young English learners.

In conclusion I would like to say that proper names play a special role in the book. They are used to enhance the character, intrigue, conflict, create a comic effect or characterize the personal qualities of a character, his occupation and social position.

And names have become the key problem for all translators who has ever tried to translate the book in any other language. Russian is not an exception.

Currently, there are a lot of translations of “Harry Potter” books into Russian, and you may see that proper names in each Russian version differ a lot. It is so because each translator wanted to bring the hidden, secret meaning of the names to Russian readers. But I can say that none of them were successful. The issue of transferring personal names and realities in works of art to different languages is still an unsolved problem. So if you want to understand the book in full, to enjoy the hidden wordplay and discover all its secrets learn English and read Harry Potter in original.

Literature:

Bardakova V. “Speaking” names in Literature for Children. Problems of Onomastics, 2009, № 7, p 48-56

Coillie J.V. Children’s Literature in Translation, Manchster, 2006, p 123-129

Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, Oxford, 2007

Wamitila K.W. What’s in a Name: Towards Literary Onomastics, Oxford, 1999

Rowling J.K. “Harry Potter: The Complete Collection. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2015

Арнольд И.В. Стилистика. Современный английский язык, М., Высшая школа 2009

Виноградов B.C. Введение в переводоведение. М., Наука ,2001.

Струкова Т.Г «Тайны Гарри Поттера», Фундаментальные исследования, 2014, №8

Роулинг Дж. Гарри Поттер. Серия из 7 книг: Гарри Поттер и философский камень. Гарри Поттер и тайная комната. Гарри Поттер и узник Азкабана. Гарри Поттер и Кубок Огня. Гарри Поттер и Орден Феникса. Гарри Поттер и Принц-полукровка. Гарри Поттер и дары Смерти. М., Росмэн, 2013

Роулинг Дж. Гарри Поттер. Комплект из 7 книг в переводе Марии Спивак. М., Махаон, 2015

Федоров В.Л. Энтимология имен и фамилий в произведении Дж.Ролинг «Гарри Поттер», «Юный ученый», 2015, №3

Websites:

doclecture.net How to Compile a Dictionary

encyclopedia.com Plants and Animals

gramota.ru Структура словарных статей

Nsportal.ru Проблемы перевода имен собственных в произведении Дж. Роулинг «Гарри Поттер»

Potter.claw.ru Гарри Поттер и произведения Дж. Роулинг

Appendix 1

Jan Van Coillie's Model of Translating Proper Names

Appendix 2

Approbation of the Dictionary on students

Appendix 3

Variations of Dictionary layout and design