Eponyms in Dance Terminology as an Object of Translation

Abstract

This paper raises both the issue of eponyms emerging in dance terminology and problems concerning their translation. In Section 1, a short introduction to the topic is presented. Section 2 covers theoretical background crucial to understand the topic, defining the notion of an eponym vital to the paper, as well as the term of sociolect in terms of dance community. Moving on to the methodology of this research, Section 3 contains the corpus of 56 Polish eponyms in dance terminology, gathered mostly from books such as Kopaliński’s “Słownik eponimów, czyli wyrazów odimiennych” (1996), his “Słownik wyrazów obcych i zwrotów obcojęzycznych” (2003), Chodkowski’s “Encyklopedia muzyki” (1995), Dąbrowska’s “W kręgu polskich tańców ludowych” (1979) and during various lectures conducted by numerous dance teachers, along with English translations of the units. Then, a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the corpus is discussed. Finally, in Section 4, conclusion of the research is presented to show the complexity of the issue of eponyms and problems that may occur in their translation.