S.A. Osokina

Altai State University, Russia

Geographic Names in Translated Hypertexts

The subject under discussion is a number of translated nominations referred to a territory of the Russian Federation Алтайский край. The problem is that the translated variations of the name of this territory are so numerous and various in the Web (Altai/Altay region, the Altai/Altay Region, Altai/Altay territory, the Altai/Altay territory, Altai/Altay Krai/Kray, Altaisky Krai/Kray, etc.) that an English-speaking user of the Web will obviously have problems associating all of them with the same geographical notion.

The problem lies in the sphere of three linguistics branches – toponymy (place-name study), theory of translation, and hypertext study – and is connected with the problems of searching, perceiving and processing information provided by the Internet.

Apparently, there are sufficient reasons for choosing each particular nomination in different Web pages but taken together they do not form a harmonious system of nominations and prevent from getting exact information. Thus, a user may have troubles trying to get whether these nominations refer to one geographic territory, or different, or name subordinate parts of one territory. Existence of many nomination of the same thing impedes forming set association between a certain name and a notion, rising misunderstanding and causing questions. For example, why is there the article the in some nominations while in the others it is missing (according to the rules of English grammar, geographical names that include the words region and territory usually start with the); why do the words region and territory begin with the small letter in some nominations (though, all words in a nomination should go with the capital letter); what are the reasons for transliteration of the second part of the nomination (Krai/Kray)?

The problem of existence of several nominations to the same geographical object is widely discussed in toponymy. It is explained mainly in two ways: 1) different names are given by a person who is perceived as a discoverer of a geographic object and by people living in that area; 2) different names are given by native inhabitants and new settlers. In the situation of having several names for one object toponymists suggest choosing one name by keeping in mind a)  the name traditionally used in everyday communication of the locals, b) the name used in the official documents of the local area, c) the name used in the local maps [1].

The first two out of the listed criteria cannot be taken into consideration with the translated names because foreign names are not frequently used in everyday communication of the residents of the Altai Territory and in official documents. That’s why the only positive criterion to choose a proper translation for the geographical name can be information given in foreign maps of the territory and reference information given in the well-known sources.

A good source for English geographical names is the maps provided by the National Geographic Society of the USA. In the Society’s map of Russia the name of the discussed area goes as Altay Territory (the absence of the article is explained with the fact that the articles are not used in the maps) [2]. Another well-known source is the Webster’s Encyclopedia Dictionary considered to be the best encyclopedia of the USA. It gives the following information: “Altai or Altay – a territory of the Russian Federation in central Asia,<…> cap. Barnaul”[3]. So, in the two most perceived information sources published in the USA we can find the lexeme territory to refer to the subject of the Russian Federation in Altai.

Another famous source, Encyclopedia Britanica, gives the name the Altai region, though, it is connected not only with the discussed subject of the Russian Federation but also with the whole mountainous area on the borders of Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and China.

To make a choice between the two given variants it would be reasonable to analyze the semantics of the lexemes territory and region. They are very close synonyms, but only the word territory contains the seme “the geographical domain under the jurisdiction of a political unit” in explicit way.

What for the nominations Altai Krai or Altaisky Kray and similar, we can say that the translators have chosen these variants due to only one reason: to keep the national color of the name. However, in this particular case we do not speak about translation of the name of the unique geographic object, we discuss variants of translation of the name of the subject of the Russian Federation. In this case, there are no sufficient reasons to substitute the term territory used for such nomination for the Russian word Krai, as there are no reasons to substitute the word river ( for example, in the nomination the Moscow-river) for the Russian reka.

Besides the listed reasons, the existence of several translated nominations of the same geographic object is caused by the endlessness of the information in the Internet and lack of criteria of estimating its relevance and selection. We suggest that the main criteria of establishing the only translated form of geographic names should be 1) the information given in well-known foreign sources, and 2) the semantic analysis of the words within the nomination.

Reference:

1. Глинских Г.В. О критериях, используемых для закрепления единой формы названия в справочниках административно-территориального деления // Языки и топонимия Алтая. – Барнаул: Изд-во Алтайского ун-та, 1979. – С. 59-64.

2. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/

3. Тhe New Webster’s Encyclopedia dictionary of the English Language. - New York, 1997.