SPEAKING NAMES IN DAN BROWN’S IDIOSTYLE AS A TRANSLATION ISSUE

Abstract

The article deals with the ways of rendering characters’ speaking names in Dan Brown's works into the Ukrainian language. The author analyses the advantages and disadvantages of these ways in order to identify the key challenges that translators face when conveying anthroponymics in the writer’s works. The author of the article determines that the use of speaking names of the characters is one of the defining features of Dan Brown’s individual style as the creative method of the writer is to invent an intellectual game between the author and the reader, to establish the atmosphere of mystery as well as to impart a symbolic meaning to the phenomena described. Speaking names contain an indication on the fate, nature of the character or even on the solution to the puzzle of the whole book. Based on Dan Brown’s works The Da Vinci Code and Inferno translated by such Ukrainian translators as V. K. Gorbatko, A. B. Kamyanets, and Ye. A. Kononenko, transcription and transliteration, which allow achieving adequate translation, were determined as the basic means of rendering the characters’ speaking names. It was concluded that the adequacy of such translation is in creating a balance between the form and the meaning of the anthroponym since in some cases it is simply impossible to preserve both the form and the meaning of the unit. This situation makes the translator face a dilemma: on the one hand, transcription / transliteration is not enough to fully reproduce the speaking name as the meanings “encoded” in it can be lost, on the other hand, the translator cannot limit himself only to the reproduction of the meaning of the unit, for this leads to the loss of the form as well as to creating additional meanings or distorting the author’s idiostyle. The study concentrates attention on the fact that each of the speaking names used in Dan Brown’s works is a puzzle for the reader, and the translator must convey it to the reader of the target language text. The author comes to conclusion that Ukrainian translators are aware of this fact, but they are forced to sacrifice some of the meanings embodied in the names for the sake of preserving the writer’s basic artistic intent.