中国文学作品标题法译对专名的处理 Zhongguo wenxue zuopin biaoti fayi dui zhuanming de chuli

In translating Chinese literature to western languages, how to deal with the onomastics (proper nouns) has been a delicate problem. This paper, based in the statistics of French translations of 237 works of Chinese literature published in France between 2000-2014, studies some rules of the proper nouns treatment in French translation of literary titles. We first make a definition of proper nouns, then discuss the four principal measures adopted by the translator to deal with all types of proper nouns: retain/conserve the original proper nouns (67% of them), delete the original proper nouns (19% of them), transform/convert the original proper nouns into common nouns (21% of the original nouns), add new proper nouns (29% of the proper nouns in the translated titles). We found out that (1) the proper nouns of Chinese culture special concepts are all deleted; (2) the title of books are all translated semantically and transformed into common nouns; (3) there are two possibilities about geographical nouns: on one hand, State names or big city names are conserved; on the other, the names of villages, streets, mountains and rivers are translated semantically and transformed into common nouns. (4) Person name is the most complex category, its treatment depends on each case. Common surnames are generally preserved, marked with pinyin. First name and nickname can be transcribed by pinyin, or translated semantically but marked as proper noun by the first capital letter, or translated semantically and transformed into common noun. Whatever it may be, the principle is only one: to put himself into the target language reader's situation, to exclude in maximum the language and cultural barriers during the reading comprehension, in order to achieve the title "finishing touch" effect