Lexical transformations are used in translation if the source text contains a non-standard linguistic unit at the word level, for example, a proper name inherent in the source language culture and absent in the target language; term in a particular professional field; words denoting objects, phenomena and concepts that are characteristic of the source culture or for the traditional naming of elements of a third culture, but are absent or have a different structural and functional order in the translating culture. Such words occupy a very important place in the translation process, since, being relatively independent of the context, they nevertheless give the translated text a different focus, depending on the choice of the translator.

Lexical translation techniques usually include the following: transcription and transliteration, tracing, lexical-semantic substitutions, specification, generalization, modulation or semantic development.

Transcription and transliteration

In other words, transcription is either transliteration (full or partial), the direct use of a given word denoting reality, or its root in writing in letters of one’s language or in combination with suffixes of one’s language.

Transliteration when translating into Russian is often used in cases where we're talking about about the names of institutions, positions specific to a given country, i.e. about the sphere of socio-political life, about the names of objects and concepts of material life, about forms of addressing the interlocutor, etc.

The transliteration method of translation is widespread and leaves a significant mark both in Russian translated literature and in original works (fiction, journalistic, scientific). This is evidenced by, for example, words related to English public life, as “peer”, “mayor”, “landlord”, “esquire”, or to Spanish as “hidalgo”, “torero”, “bullfight”, etc.; words related to the life of a French city, such as “fiacre”, “concierge”; English addresses "miss", "sir" and many others like them.

There is no word that could not be translated into another language, at least descriptively, i.e. a common combination of words in a given language. But transliteration is necessary precisely when it is important to maintain the lexical brevity of the designation, corresponding to its familiarity in the original language, and at the same time emphasize the specificity of the named thing or concept, if there is no exact correspondence in the target language. When assessing the appropriateness of using transliteration, it is necessary to take into account exactly how important the transfer of this specificity is. If the latter is not required, then the use of transliteration turns into abuse of foreign borrowings, leading to obscuring the meaning and clogging the native language.

Particular attention should be paid to the translation problem of the so-called realia, the naming of national-cultural objects that are characteristic of the source culture and are relatively little known or not at all known to the translating culture. In conditions of large-scale intercultural communication, such names constitute a very significant group, and the most common way of transmitting them in another language is translation transcription or standard transliteration.

The expediency and legitimacy of transliteration in certain cases is proven by the fact that often authors writing about the life of other peoples resort to this linguistic means as a way to name and emphasize the reality specific to the life of a given people. The Russian language included, for example, the words “aul”, “kishlak”, “saklya” and many others, and it was in this transliteration that they became traditional. This emphasized the specificity of the thing denoted by the word, its difference from what could be approximately denoted by the corresponding Russian word (cf. “aul” and “kishlak”, on the one hand, and “village”, on the other, “saklya” or “ hut" and "hut"). An example of words borrowed from original literature through transliteration serves as motivation for using such words in translation.

Often foreign words are transferred into the target language precisely to highlight the shade of specificity that is inherent in the reality they express - with the possibility of a lexical translation, more or less accurate.

When a transliterated word is rarely used or, especially, transferred to a Russian translated text for the first time, a commentary explanation and appropriate context are sometimes necessary.

However, in Russian translations of Western European fiction for Lately There is an increasing tendency to avoid words that would require explanatory notes not intended by the original - i.e. namely transliterated designations of foreign realities, in addition to those that have already become familiar. On the contrary, in modern translations from Eastern languages, transliteration is used quite often when talking about things or phenomena specific to material or social life, i.e. that have no correspondence with us.

Transliteration and transcription are used to translate proper names, names of peoples and tribes, geographical names, names of business institutions, companies, firms, periodicals, names of sports teams, stable groups of rock musicians, cultural objects, etc. Most of these names are relatively easy to translation transcription or, less commonly, transliterations:

Hollywood - Hollywood

Pencey - Pansy

Saxon Hall - Saxon Hall

Robert Tichener - Robert Tichener

Paul Campbell - Paul Campbell

Elkton Hill - Elkton Hill

Edgar Marsala - Eddie Marsala

Bank of London - Bank of London

Minnesota - Minnesota

Wall Street Journal - Wall Street Journal

Detroit Red Wings - Detroit Red Wings

Beatles - The Beatles, etc.

The names and titles of fantastic creatures mentioned in folklore and literary sources are also transcribed:

Wikiwand Baba Yaga

Hobbit - The Hobbit

goblin - goblin, etc.

In relation to foreign proper names - be they first or last names of real or fictitious persons, geographical names, etc. - Of great importance is the question of their sound design during translation and - accordingly - about their writing. The more discrepancies there are in the phonetic structure of two languages, in the composition and system of their phonemes, the more acute this issue.

In the presence of common system alphabet in two languages ​​(as, for example, in Western European Romance, Germanic and Finno-Ugric languages), they generally refuse to reproduce the sound form of names in translations and in original texts, limiting themselves only to the exact reproduction of their spelling - transliteration. In Russian literature - both translated and original - there is (to the extent possible) a tradition of conveying the sound appearance of foreign-language proper names. Of course, if there is a significant phonetic discrepancy between two languages ​​(as, for example, between English and Russian), the reproduction of their phonetic side can only be partial and conditional and usually represents a certain compromise between the transmission of sound and spelling.

When it comes to common names (big cities, rivers, famous historical figures) or common names, the translator is guided by tradition - regardless of the possibility of getting closer to the original sound. Sometimes traditional Russian spelling can be quite close to the exact phonetic form of a foreign name, for example: “Schiller”, “Byron”, “Dante”, “Brandenburg”, etc.

Anthony Wayne Avenue - Anthony Wayne street

The rule of applying translation transcription or transliteration to names that exists in translation practice often turns out to be insufficient if a proper name is burdened with a symbolic function, that is, it becomes a name unique object, or is used not as a name, but as, for example, a nickname, that is, it is a kind of common noun, since it reflects the individual characteristics and properties of the named object. In such cases, in addition to transcription or instead of it, a combination of semantic translation and tracing is used. In some cases, tradition will require different renderings of the same name in the same language for different texts: thus the English "George" is usually transcribed as "George", but when it is the name of a king, it is transliterated as " George".

Some problems may arise when translating the names of educational institutions in the context of different educational traditions into different countries. Thus, in the American education system, the word school is widely used to describe a number of educational institutions, completely different in level and type. Translation from Russian may also have some difficulties: for example, the word institute in Russia is used to denote higher educational institution, as well as for a research or even administrative institution, while in English-speaking countries the word institute is used only in the second meaning, and therefore is not always adequate as a correspondence, since it distorts the essence of the original concept.

Whooton School - Whooton School

Finally, a special type of linguistic units that are usually transcribed are terms. The source of transcriptions is usually Greek, Latin or English units, depending on which roots underlie the original term. Russian terms, marked by national flavor, also often become the object of transcription when translated into English:

chernozem - chernozem

In other words, transcription is either transliteration (full or partial), the direct use of a given word denoting reality, or its root in writing in letters of one’s language or in combination with suffixes of one’s language.

Transliteration when translating into Russian is often used in cases where we are talking about the names of institutions and positions specific to a given country, i.e. about the sphere of socio-political life, about the names of objects and concepts of material life, about forms of addressing the interlocutor, etc.

The transliteration method of translation is widespread and leaves a significant mark both in Russian translated literature and in original works (fiction, journalistic, scientific). Evidence of this is, for example, words related to English public life, such as “peer”, “mayor”, “landlord”, “esquire”, or to Spanish words such as “hidalgo”, “torero”, “bullfight”, etc. .; words related to the life of a French city, such as “fiacre”, “concierge”; English addresses "miss", "sir" and many others like them.

There is no word that could not be translated into another language, at least descriptively, i.e. a common combination of words in a given language. But transliteration is necessary precisely when it is important to maintain the lexical brevity of the designation, corresponding to its familiarity in the original language, and at the same time emphasize the specificity of the named thing or concept, if there is no exact correspondence in the target language. When assessing the appropriateness of using transliteration, it is necessary to take into account exactly how important the transfer of this specificity is. If the latter is not required, then the use of transliteration turns into abuse of foreign borrowings, leading to obscuring the meaning and clogging the native language.

Particular attention should be paid to the translation problem of the so-called realia, the naming of national-cultural objects that are characteristic of the source culture and are relatively little known or not at all known to the translating culture. In conditions of large-scale intercultural communication, such names constitute a very significant group, and the most common way of transmitting them in another language is translation transcription or standard transliteration.

Transliteration and transcription are used to translate proper names, names of peoples and tribes, geographical names, names of business institutions, companies, firms, periodicals, names of sports teams, stable groups of rock musicians, cultural objects, etc. Most of these names are relatively easy to translate or, less commonly, transliterate:

Hollywood - Hollywood [Transl. 241]

Pencey - Pansy [Trans. 241]

Saxon Hall - Saxon Hall [Trans. 242]

Bank of London - Bank of London

Minnesota - Minnesota

Wall Street Journal – Wall Street Journal

Detroit Red Wings - Detroit Red Wings

Beatles - The Beatles, etc. [Kazakova, p. 67].

The names and titles of fantastic creatures mentioned in folklore and literary sources are also transcribed:

Baba Yaga

Hobbit - Hobbit

goblin - goblin etc. [Kazakova, p.75]

When it comes to common names (big cities, rivers, famous historical figures) or common names, the translator is guided by tradition - regardless of the possibility of getting closer to the original sound. Sometimes the traditional Russian spelling is quite close to the exact phonetic form of a foreign name, for example: “Schiller”, “Byron”, “Dante”, “Brandenburg”, etc.

Anthony Wayne Avenue - Anthony Wayne Street [Transl. 243]

Finally, a special type of linguistic units that are usually transcribed are terms. The source of transcriptions is usually Greek, Latin or English units, depending on which roots underlie the original term. Russian terms, marked by national flavor, also often become the object of transcription when translated into English:

chernozem – chernozem

Duma - Duma, etc. [Kazakova, p.75]

The difference between transliteration and transcription should be clarified:

1. In contrast to transcription, intended to convey the sounds of a language as accurately as possible, transliteration, as the term itself shows (Latin litera - letter), concerns the written form of the language: a text written in one alphabet or another is transmitted by the alphabet of another system . In this case, only the correspondence of the letters of two alphabets is usually taken into account, and the sounds hiding behind them are not taken into account.

2. Transliteration is used primarily in relation to dead languages, such as Sanskrit, Old Persian, etc. In addition, texts of living languages ​​that use a little-known or difficult alphabet, such as Arabic, etc., are often transliterated.

3. When transliterating living languages, they usually follow the path of compromise, since to some extent it is necessary to take into account the sound aspect, so as not to tear the word too much away from its living sounding form; in other words, it is not the alphabet that is transliterated, but the graphics system adopted in a given language. For example, a French surname Daudet transliterated in Russian Dode (or Dode), that is, it is taken into account that [combination] au in French means o, and the final t not pronounced. In pure transliteration one would have to write this surname Daudet (or Daudet), which would hardly be rational, since it would be too far removed sonically from the original..

4. Transliteration should be distinguished from transcription, which consists of letter-by-letter transfer of writing from one alphabet to another, for example, from Russian to Latin, or vice versa. Transliteration has wide application in writing geographical names and other proper names. Despite the apparent simplicity of the task of replacing some letters with others, transliteration often presents great difficulties. These difficulties stem from the fact that the composition of the alphabet of one language often does not coincide with the composition of the alphabet of another language...

5. When transliteration in pure form is impossible for the stated reason, or when it is desirable to convey not the spelling, but the sound of a word or part of it, one has to use partial or practical transcription. It goes without saying that the transcription is very conditional, since it does not convey the original pronunciation of the word, but only an approximate one, carried out by the sound means of the borrowing language. Sometimes such transcription can be very close to transcription in the proper sense of the word...

6. Transliteration in its pure form is often not used even when it is quite possible, but separates writing from pronunciation. Name of a French city Rouen it would be possible to write in Russian Rowan, but they prefer the spelling Rouen as closer to French pronunciation.

Transliteration classification

According to the severity of presentation

1) Strict: replacing each character of the source text with only one character of another script (a→a, b→b, c→v...).

2) Weakened: replacement of some characters of the source text with combinations of two or more characters of another script (zh→zh, ch→ch, ya→ya...).

3) Extended: representation of certain combinations of characters in the source text in a special way (й→y).

Conversion rules

Requirements:

1. Unambiguity: ensuring the stability of the representation of elements of the original written language (letters, words, expressions) by means of another (converting) written language.

2.Simplicity: ensuring automatic execution of the procedure for moving from the original text to the converted one based on simple algorithms, mainly reduced to the use of tables for replacing characters of one writing system with characters of another writing system.

3.Also desirable reversibility this transformation so that the original spelling can be restored; in practice this is not always observed.

Compliance with the rules

When applying conversion rules, the requirements for the sound correspondence of the signs of the converted writing systems, aesthetic considerations and traditional norms may not be observed everywhere, although in each individual case it is desirable to develop such rules so that the violation of traditional, phonetic and aesthetic norms is minimal. However, anyone who knows the source language and the rules of conversion has the ability to reconstruct the original text and read it according to the rules of the source language.

Transcription involves introducing the corresponding reality into the translation text using graphic means of the target language with the maximum phonetic approximation allowed by these means to its original phonetic form: Russian. "dumplings" and English. "pelmens", German. "Bundestag" and Russian. "Bundestag", English. "LG" and Russian "El G." The desirability of using transcription when transmitting realities is due to the fact that with successful transcription, the translator can overcome both of the difficulties mentioned above - conveying both semantic content and color. If there is no letter in the target language that denotes a sound similar in sound to the sound in the source text, combinations of letters are used that give the corresponding sound.

Thus, the Russian “zh” is transmitted in English through the combination “zh”, “x” through “kh”, “ш” through “shch” and so on. Transcription is widely used in journalism and quite often in fiction depending on the nature of the text (for example, in an adventure novel, transcribed reality can be an element of exoticism). In the author's speech or text with detailed descriptions transcription may be the most successful solution, since in such texts there is greater opportunity to reveal the content of reality. The choice of transcription during translation also depends on the reader to whom the text is aimed, that is, it is necessary to take into account the degree of familiarity of reality, since it should not remain beyond his perception. So, for example, in a translated article about football published in a youth magazine, the concept of “fan” (from the English “fan”) will not cause misunderstandings.

But if the translation of this article is intended for publication in a magazine, the readers of which may include people of retirement age, then the translator should think about the appropriateness of the transcription and consider other translation techniques (for example, replacing it with the more neutral concept of “fan” "). Transcription is most widely used in relation to familiar realities: international, regional, one’s own (if they are present in the source text), especially if they meet the rule of stylistic brightness. There is also a group of realities that, given the existing full-fledged correspondences in other languages, are traditionally transcribed (“stanitsa” is transferred into English as “stanitsa”, into German as “Staniza”). One of the main advantages of transcription as a technique is maximum brevity, which in some cases is the main reason for transcription.

It should be noted that transcription, like any other technique, should be used with caution, since in some cases the transfer of color, not being a determining factor, can push into the background the transfer of the semantic content of reality, thereby failing to fulfill the communicative task of translation. The abundance of transcribed words can lead to an overload of the text with realities, which does not bring the reader closer to the original, but moves away from it. In some cases, it is necessary to combine transcription with additional means of comprehension, in particular this concerns the translation of realities that are “ false friends translator." This group, for example, includes “...names of measures, weights and other measurement quantities that are consonant in the source language and the target language, but do not coincide in quantity” [Latyshev 2000: 165]. For example, translating German. “Pfund” (500g) with the Russian measure “pound” (409.5g), it is advisable, for example, to indicate this difference in a footnote. Speaking about transcription, it is necessary to mention the phenomenon of interlingual homonymy, that is, the presence in the target language of words that are phonetically close to the realities to be translated. “Transcriptions... are dangerous when they contradict the reader’s aesthetic sense, resembling obscene or funny-sounding words of the native language” [Sadikov 1984: 82].

In some cases, this factor forces the translator to refuse to use the described technique. The use of transliteration in conveying realities is very limited; it can be discussed when translating concepts related mainly to socio-political life and proper names: Russian. "sarafan" and English. "sarafan", English. "London" and Russian. "London". In addition, it should be noted that in some cases it is difficult to distinguish transcription from transliteration due to the relative similarity of these techniques.

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Concepts transcription And transliteration may present certain difficulties for many students in the faculties foreign languages. Not only that transcription And transliteration are so similar in appearance that they put you in a trance, and also due to chronic lack of sleep and colossal academic workload, the brain stupidly refuses to work and is unable to identify the difference between the two concepts.

After reading the article, you will understand that there is nothing complicated about transcription and transliteration. As they say, I will chew everything for you, but I won’t put it in your mouth, because I avoid random connections.

Get ready to radically change your life and finally understand what transcription and transliteration are! If you came here for fresh and unique examples that you are unlikely to find in worn-out and scribbled textbooks, then you are also in the right place. Do you like knowledge mixed with humor? Welcome! There will be something for everyone to learn.

In this article, we will carefully consider what transcription and transliteration are, deeply understand the importance of choosing the optimal technique for conveying a proper name, analyze a bunch of examples of successful and unsuccessful translation solutions, and much, much more.

Transcription and transliteration. Definitions

First, let's define: what are transcription and transliteration? Bruce Willis will help us understand the difference.

I'll help you out dawg

Transcription(=transcription) – reproduction sound

Remember how in schools you were forced to write transcriptions in order to pronounce words correctly. They scared us that if we didn’t write down the transcription for the word sausage(/ˈsɒs.ɪdʒ/), then all our lives we will say SAUSAGE.

Let's look at transcription in relation to translation. Let's take a popular actor as an example. BruceWillis. Pronounce his name the same way native speakers would pronounce it. in English. Happened? Now say the same thing, but with a strong Russian accent. Write down what happened. If you did everything correctly, then BruceWillis turned into Bruce Willis. Congratulations! You have just transferred the actor's first and last name using transcription*.

* By the way, the last name can be written as Wilis: The second L does not affect the sound in any way.

Transcription (transcription) in translation – maximum approximate reproduction of the sound of a word. In the case of translation from English into Russian, the transmission is as close as the phonetics of the Russian language allows. One hundred percent preservation of the original sound cannot be achieved due to the lack of certain sounds in the Russian language, for example, such as /r/ and /uː/ in the word Bruce, as well as /ɪ/ in Willis.

By the way, many Russian speakers have no difficulty in reproducing the sound /w/, despite its absence in the Russian language.

The transcription is great because even after pronouncing BruceWillis(or any other proper name) in the Russian manner, native English speakers can easily understand you.

OOOO BRUCE WILLIS IS COOL!

Transliteration– playback letter composition foreign word in the target language.

If you constantly confuse terms transcription And transliteration, then here's a life hack for you: in trans litera tion you can see the presence of the Latin word littera, which means letter in English and... letter in Russian.

There was a time when people wrote in translit, i.e. wrote Russian words in Latin letters. Each Russian letter had its own correspondence and, as a rule, more than one. For example, the letter “Zh” could be written as ZH or as J.

Thanks to transliteration, SMS messages were shorter and, accordingly, cheaper. On the forums, translit was associated with living abroad or playing online games on European and American servers.

Transliteration example: “the file is in the zoo” – > faillezhitvzoopark. Only Russian speakers will be able to correctly pronounce the resulting product. If you gave this to a native English speaker to read, it would look something like fail lezhit in zupark.

As can be seen from the example above, the use of transliteration distorts the sound of the original beyond recognition.

Let's give an example of using transliteration to convey a proper name from English to Russian. Bruce, wait, we're going to need you again now.

Imagine that you are a person who does not know English, but knows how to read Latin letters thanks to algebra, geometry and physics lessons at school. Read BruceWillis. The surname will work out Willis, and the name will become something like Brousse, Brooke or Bruce.

Regardless of which version of the name you choose, it is obvious that transliteration mercilessly destroys the original phonetic structure of the word.

Transliteration is the usual conversion of letters from English to Russian. All you need to do is find a transliteration table on the Internet, where for each letter of one language there is an equivalent from another language, and convert letter by letter.

Let's summarize the difference between transcription and transliteration before moving on to the main part of this article. Let's take out our sausages:

SAUSAGE – > SOSIJ (transcription/transcription);

SAUSAGE – > SAUSAGE (transliteration).

Transcription and transliteration using the example of transferring celebrity names

In order to better understand what transcription and transliteration are, I will give you a bunch of examples of transferring celebrity names from English to Russian.

I would like to note right away: I am for maximum preservation of the original sound when transferring proper names. I am for transcription!

Sounds like a political slogan.

In general, in my opinion, transliteration should be used only in cases where the original sound, when transmitted into the target language, either takes on a politically incorrect/obscene coloring, or is transformed into something unpronounceable.

You can’t just go ahead and pronounce the “unpronounceable.”

We will mainly focus on cases where, during transmission into Russian, the sound of the original was distorted either without any need, or... with secret intent. We will see both minor deviations and serious discrepancies with the original. Let's go through everyone: singers, actors, politicians, heroes of films and books, as well as some brands. Among other things, I will talk about possible reasons why these names or surnames were translated into Russian incorrectly.

You, dear readers, are given the opportunity to be judges and make your own verdict: in which cases it will be more harmonious and appropriate to use the original sound, and in which cases it is better to leave the Russian-language analogue.

So let's get started.

1. Walt Disney

I'm not Walt Disney ©

Disney– > Disney. What translation technique is used here: transcription (the sound of the original is preserved) or transliteration (to hell with the original sound, we just change the letters)?

I might surprise you, but actually Disney in English it sounds something like "dizney". Accordingly, when transmitting this proper name, transliteration was used.

The reason you mispronounced this word is that previously, when transmitting foreign proper names, they predominantly used transliteration. For example, the surname Watson used to be rendered as Watson, but now it sounds much closer to the original - Watson (transcription). Now, thanks to the Internet, you can listen to how native speakers actually pronounce this or that word, but before there was no such privilege.

DISNEY – > DISNEY (transliteration)

DISNEY – > DISNEY (transcription)

2. Hachiko

In a name that has become synonymous with unprecedented fidelity, instead of the letter T in the original * Ch.

HACHIKO – > HACHIKO (???)

Guys, the third method of conveying proper names is politically correct adaptation. Imagine how much trouble translators would have had if they had used transcription in the example above!

* As user RTM noted in the comments, Hachiko is not the original at all, but just a transfer Japanese pronunciations in Latin.

In the Japanese word hachi, the combination CH resembles something between T and C. Thus, there can be no talk of any politically correct adaptation into Russian. They simply took the Japanese original and translated it into Russian in accordance with the rules.

However, this does not change the fact that English speakers pronounce H in Hachiko.

3. Mark Zuckerberg

The founder of the original contact is known in Russia as Mark Zuckerberg. Place your bets: transcription (in the USA they call him Zuckerberg too?) or transliteration?

Mark... with a "K"

IN in this case last name Zuckerberg transmitted using transliteration from German to Russian. Despite the fact that the surname of the king of Facebook is of German origin, in the English-speaking world it is pronounced according to English rules.

ZUCKERBERG – > ZUCKERBERG (transliteration)

ZUCKERBERG – > ZAKERBERG / ZAKERBERG (transcription)

4. Hermione Granger and two ways to convey the letter “H”

I won't surprise anyone by saying that Harry Potter's name actually sounds like Harry. The letter “eych” at the beginning of proper names is conveyed through the letter X or through the letter G. In general, through the best letters of the Russian alphabet.

G (traditional method)

Hannibal – > Hannibal

Hector – > Hector

Henry – > Henry

Homer – > Homer

X (modern way)

Hank – > Hank

Harrison – > Harrison

Holden – > Holden

Hugh – > Hugh

Now consider the transformation from Hermione V Hermione. What was used: transcription or transliteration?

Wingardium Leviosa

In the original the name sounds like “hermáini”. If they wanted to preserve the original sound and used transcription to convey this name, then the stress would fall not on E, but on the second syllable. But this shouldn’t happen in Russian!

If E was replaced by E, then Russian-speaking readers would not be able to take Hermione seriously.

Something between transcription and transliteration would be Germaini, but you can easily make a mistake by saying not the name of the young sorceress, but the name of the country.

In general, the transformation from “hermáini” to Hermione is absolutely justified, in my opinion. Moreover the name Hermione appeared in ancient Greek myths and in Winter's Tale"Shakespeare, from where J. K. Rowling, by the way, borrowed this name. So this is not a crazy invention of post-Soviet translators, but a historically established version of the transmission.

HERMIONE – > HERMIONE (transliteration)

5. Jude Law and Jennifer Lawrence

Jude Law and Jennifer Lawrence. What technique was used to convey their surnames? Transcription? Transliteration? Transdolboyation?

In short, the original sound of these surnames was subjected to a completely senseless distortion. The translators who initiated this error, which has become so ingrained that no one cares, stupidly did not know how to pronounce the combination of letters AW in English. There is no U there at the end. This is not LOW, but LAW!

LO and LAWRENCE - that's right. Can't we say it in Russian? What was the point of making a clumsy symbiosis of transcription and transliteration? If there had been 100% transliteration, it would have worked Love or Lau... in short, everything is very bad.

The case with Lo And Lowe I care most. The fact is that the unsuccessful transfer of these surnames into Russian has a Negative influence on the pronunciation of those learning English. This mistake becomes fixed in people’s minds and I, as a teacher, then have to eradicate it long and hard, because I cannot listen calmly when instead law They say low, instead of saw – sew, instead of drawn – drone etc.

From the example above it is clear: the letter U can either be shoved into surnames without any need, or taken away illegally. Take a look at Edgar Allan Poe's last name. In the original there is a U at the end ( Poe, i.e. Pou), but when transferring the surname into Russian, she drowned)))

POE – > POE (transliteration)

POE – > POE (transcription)

POE – > software (this is how it happened historically)

6. Xena - Warrior Princess

In the 90s they showed the TV series “Xena: Warrior Princess”. In English, this lady's name is pronounced Zina, which, you see, would sound ridiculous in Russian.

Zina is a warrior princess.

XENA – > XENA (transliteration)

XENA – > ZINA (transcription)

XENA – > XENA (transliteration + transcription)

7. Michael Douglas

Michael Douglas is another example of a completely meaningless transformation. In the original the surname reads Douglas. Let's attribute the incorrect transmission to the fact that the translators of the 90s did not have access to YouTube to find the original pronunciation of the surname in a matter of seconds.

DOUGLAS – > DOUGLAS (transliteration)

DOUGLAS – > DOUGLAS (transcription)

8. Jen Psaki

The once famous Jen Psaki's last name is actually pronounced without the letter P.

PSAKI – > PSAKI (transliteration)

PSAKI – > SAKI (transcription)

9. Abraham Lincoln and historical equivalents

16th US President Abraham Lincoln. In the original name - Abraham. Why do we speak Russian? Abraham, and not, say, Abraham? There is Abraham Maslow and his pyramid of needs, so why is the same name translated differently?

Modern translators, when it is necessary to convey an English proper name into Russian, mainly use transcription, although transliteration was previously more popular.

However, there are also historical equivalents that must be adhered to. Unfortunately, due to large quantity There are no clear rules for exceptions, but a general trend can be identified: if we are talking about outstanding figure past centuries, especially the monarch, then the transfer will be done in the traditional way.

However, if we are talking about people born in the 20th century and later, then these same names will be transmitted using transcription:

Lincoln's name is rendered as Abraham, most likely due to the fact that he was born and died in the 19th century, which cannot be said about the more modern Abraham Maslow, who developed the well-known pyramid in the mid-20th century.

The last thing I want to focus on is the last name Lincoln. How does it sound in English? I'll give you a little hint: Lincoln Park is located in the USA. Doesn't this remind you of the name of a certain group? Well, of course, we're talking about LinkinPark.

So, last name Lincoln in English it is pronounced the same way as the word is written Linkin, i.e. Linkin. Initially LinkinPark wanted to use the president's surname in their name ( LincolnPark), but due to the impossibility of registering such a domain, several letters were replaced, while maintaining the original sound.

If you use transcription to convey the first and last names of the 16th President of the United States, you will get Abraham Linkin. But, of course, we will not do this.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN – > ABRAHAM LINCOLN (historical rendering + transliteration)

ABRAHAM LINCOLN – > ABRAHAM LINCIN (transcription)

10. David Duchovny

Transformation from DavidDuchovny in David Duchovny - quite strange.

David Dukhovny

Let's start with the fact that this is not a transcription ( Dukovni) and not even transliteration ( Duchovny).

I assume that when transferring the surname, the translators drew attention to the incredible similarity of David’s surname with a Jewish surname Spiritual. Moreover, David's father was Jewish.

All this, of course, is good, but the only thing I don’t understand is why David didn’t Spiritual, but just Duchovny? Is it because Americans, by definition, cannot be spiritual?

DAVID DUCHOVNY – > DAVID DUCHOVNY (Hebrew equivalent without the Y)

DAVID DUCHOVNY – > DAVID DUCHOVNY (transcription*)

* The name David in English is pronounced day-vid, i.e. David. Well, since it happened historically David, then that’s how it should be. Transcription ≠ 100% reproduction of the original sound.

Now let's quickly go through the rest. I will show you a common version of the transmission and how it would approximately look in Russian using transcription.

Now you have learned to distinguish between concepts transcription And transliteration. Congratulations!

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