Pura Vida : A study on translation of proper nouns, figures of speech and terminology in an English travel guide about Costa Rica

Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the difficulties that came up in the translation of an English travel guide about Costa Rica into Swedish, and what strategies may be employed in order to solve them. The focus is on how to handle proper nouns, figures of speech and terminology.

In order to gather material for the study an English travel guide about Costa Rica was translated into Swedish and then some of the translation problems encountered during translation were chosen for an in-depth analysis. The analysis is mainly based on Rune Ingo’s and Peter Newmark’s theories, but other sources have also been used as a basis for the discussion.  

Proper nouns were mostly handled by transference of the names in their original forms into the TT as well as transference in combination with a functional or descriptive equivalent. Where appropriate, some proper nouns were translated with recognized Swedish translations or partially translated and partially transferred. Many metaphors and idioms were translated into corresponding figurative expressions found in the target language. When this was not possible, they were either translated word-for-word, provided that they still conveyed the meaning of the ST metaphor or idiom, or translated with a non-figurative expression. In order to make up for lost figurative expressions, one non-figurative expression was translated with a metaphor. Regarding terminology, terms were mostly translated with corresponding terms found in Swedish bilingual dictionaries or other resources on the Internet. However, some terms had to be transferred from the ST in their original forms or translated with less specific words, since no corresponding terms could be found in the target language.

The findings show that several different strategies were used to handle translation of proper nouns, figures of speech and terminology in this specific travel guide and which strategy to use depends on situational factors.