Translation of Names in Children’s Fantasy Literature: Bringing the Young Reader into Play

Abstract

This paper discusses the translation of names in children’s fantasy literature and highlights the importance of names in translating this particular text type. First, it defines what it is meant by “names” and attempts to present some of the most important types of “meanings” usually conveyed by names. Then, it discusses the issue of readability in the translation of these narrative elements. Next, building on Hermans’s (1988) ways of rendering names from L1 to L2, it offers a classification of ten translation procedures that were identified in the Portuguese-English Parallel Corpus of Children’s Fantasy Literature, namely PEPCOCFL.