TECHNIQUES IN THE TRANSLATION OF NAMES AND DESIGNATIONS IN ANIMATED FEATURE FILM TITLES (A BULGARIAN - RUSSIAN COMPARATIVE CASE STUDY)

Abstract

The crucial role of titles is a well-established fact and they are a research area to which have been dedicated abundant literature sources and studies. Titles in general, their typology and functions, can be studied from numerous perspectives and within various theoretical and research frameworks, ranging from literary studies and linguistics to marketing and advertising. It is only natural that this range might seem broad and include seemingly irreconcilable approaches and methods of research - this is a logical consequence from the uniqueness of the title as an object of research. The present article is an interdisciplinary study in the sense that it aims to analyse not only the linguistics- and translation-related aspect of titles but also to discuss some marketing aspects and the crucial role they play. This is due to the nature of the specific object of the study, namely the titles of content (animated feature films) which has a potentially dominant marketing function. More specifically, the paper focuses on the way names and designations are translated in these marketing- and advertising-oriented products and it does so on a comparative basis between Bulgarian and Russian as TLs, and English as the original SL. The present article is a comparative corpus study based on a corpus of 111 units of analysis, the names/ designations contained in the titles of animated feature films produced by 5 of the leading animation studios - Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Blue Sky Studios, Illumination and Sony Pictures Animation. The corpus of the study comprises the titles of all animated feature films which have had an official premiere and have been officially distributed in theaters in Bulgaria and the Russian Federation since the 1990s. More specifically, the research interest focuses on the specific set of translation techniques which are selected and utilized by the different studios for the rendering of names and designations which appear in the corpus of titles in Bulgarian and Russian, respectively. For the purposes of the present study the term “translation technique” will be used in the sense and according to the definition proposed by Molina and Hurtado Albir (2002, p. 509) and will be regarded as non-synonymous to other commonly used terms such as method, strategy and procedure. The translation techniques to be investigated in the present article, therefore, are specifically those 18 listed in the classification proposed by the two aforementioned authors. Methodologically, the paper is a mixed study with a qualitative accent, i.e., the quantitative results from the processing and analysis of the corpus data do not claim to be representative overall but instead serve as the basis for a qualitative analysis of phenomena pertaining to this specific case study - namely, the specific translation techniques used in the translation of names and designations from English as the SL into Bulgarian and Russian as the TLs. The analysis includes insights that pertain to the cultural and linguistic aspects of the names and designations in translation, which aims to provide reference to the context of appearance of these translations and to potentially throw light on some specificities within the framework of the present study.