Translation Decisions
The common meaning of the word or words constituting a proper noun may be unrelated to the object to which the proper noun refers. For example, someone might be named Tiger Smith despite being neither a tiger nor a smith. For this reason, proper nouns are usually not translated between languages, although they may be transliterated. For example, the German surname Römer becomes Romer or Roemer in English. However, the translation of place names and the names of monarchs, popes, and non-contemporary authors is common and sometimes universal. For instance, the Portuguese word Lisboa becomes Lisbon in English; the English London becomes Londres in French, Portuguese and Spanish; and the Greek Ἀριστοτέλης (Aristotelēs) becomes Aristotle in English.
Generally, modern times brought the abandonment of translation of people's names and surnames, and significant abatement in the translation of names of places, organizations, companies, projects, objects. The main reason is that the verbatim form and wording of the official name became a fixed identifier of the named subject, contrary to the past times when they were more variable and not formally stabilized.
Read more about this topic: Proper Noun
Famous quotes containing the words translation and/or decisions:
“Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information—hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“You can’t talk about a kind of democracy unless those who are affected by decisions make those decisions whether the institutions in question be the welfare department, the university, the factory, the farm, the neighborhood, the country.”
—Casey Hayden (b. c. 1940)