Translation of Toponimes as a Problem of Teaching Literary Translation (by the Material of Translations of Students and High School Pupils)

Abstract

This article is devoted to the translation of toponyms and the main difficulties that young translators face in this process.

The purpose of this article is to identify some errors in the translation of toponyms and, in particular, their category – urbanonyms (names of intracity objects) from Russian into Bulgarian. This study is carried out on the basis of student translations and translations of high school students.

The main method used in this article is a comparative analysis of the translation with the original at the lexical and semantic levels; the descriptive method and the method of analyzing translation errors from the point of view of their essence and causes are also applied.

The analysis of translations of students made it possible to identify the following errors in the transfer of toponymic names – urbanonyms from Russian into Bulgarian: inaccurate transfer of names included in the category of national-specific realities and abbreviations; non-compliance with the punctuation rules of the Bulgarian language in the spelling of the names of urbanonyms denoting streets, squares, etc.; errors associated with language proficiency at the level of morphology and with the perception of the graphic form of toponyms.

The results of the analysis are relevant for teaching literary translation and will help overcome errors of this type in the process of training young translators.