STRATEGIES OF CONVEYING ENGLISH ANTHROPONYMS IN UKRAINIAN

Abstract

The rendering of personal names from English into Ukrainian is complex activity with rigid rules. Personal names have six main functions: identification, reference, individualisation, differentiation, classification and categorisation. The proper names of people can signal gender, race, social class, age and nationality. Personal names have impoverished semantics and no reliable information can be gained from them. The names rendered improperly may bias or obscure reality. The signalling power of an English personal name in Ukrainian graphics is lower than that of the name in English graphics. The methods of rendering proper names are semantic translation, functional analogue, transliteration, transcription, transposition, tradition, tracing, half-tracing, euphonic rendering, explication, combined rendering, rendering a name in Latin without changes and transplantation. The strategies to render English anthroponyms into Ukrainian are based on these methods, the semantics of a name, its image and function, national and language specifics, a pragmatic task and the use of a dictionary. To convey people’s proper names in Ukrainian, it is necessary to make sure that the word calls a person, to identify the national and language origin of the name, to determine traditional variants and choose appropriate strategies. The personal name rendered becomes part of Ukrainian text.