Venekeelsete kohanimede edasiandmisest eesti keeles

Abstract

Artiklis käsitletakse venekeelsete kohanimede (eelkõige tänavanimede) eesti keeles edasiandmise probleeme. Teema on eriti aktuaalne vande-, kohtu- ja politseitõlkide jaoks, kelle igapäevatöösse kuulub dokumentide tõlkimine. Uurimuse eesmärk on kõrvutada ühelt poolt erialakirjanduses antavaid juhiseid ning teiselt poolt tõlkijate endi seisukohti. Tõlkijatele saadetud küsimustikuga kogutud andmetest nähtub, et teooria ja praktika vahel on küllaltki suured erinevused, mis näivad olevat tingitud sellest, et puudub ühtlustatud süsteem Vene kohanimede edasiandmiseks eesti keeles, tõlkijad ei tea võimalike abistavate allikate olemasolust ning tuginevad vaid enda kogemusele ja keelevaistule. Seetõttu on vaja reegleid ühtlustada ja täpsustada ning hoolitseda selle eest, et need oleksid hõlpsasti leitavad ja kättesaadavad kõigile asjaosalistele.

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On the transposition of Russian place names into Estonian

This article focuses on the problem of translating Russian place names into Estonian. The topic is relevant for legal translators whose daily work involves translating various documents that contain addresses. It important that place names (addresses) in the translated text be correctly “re-translatable” back into the source language. The aim of our study is to compare advice given in literature on the subject (theory) on the one hand to real translators’ strategies (practice) on the other.

There exist recommendations from a variety of sources and these recommendations are different for different languages. The main idea is that one should translate the part of the proper Russian noun which includes the common name (with lexical meaning) and then “restore” the origin of the part which is derived from the proper noun and formulate it in Estonian. This means that the translator should find the place name used for composing the name of the district or other type of administrative division. These recommendations end with a suggestion to differentiate between the fundamental end goals of translating legal texts and fictional texts.

To find out what happens in real translation practice we composed a set of questions in which we asked sworn, court and police translators to transpose Russian place names into Estonian. Our respondents demonstrated very different strategies: from total translation (площадь Энергетиков – Energeetikute väljak ‘Power engineers square’) to transliteration (the transposition of the letters, not the sounds: ploštšad Energetikov). Some examples of partial transcription were also to be found: Energetikov väljak ‘Energetikov square’. There were barely any examples of place names that translators had transposed identically.

Data collected from the questionnaire showed that there are quite large differences between theory and practice.

In order to improve this situation and reduce translator confusion we propose giving preference to the complete practical transcription (transliteration) of Russian place names in this type of text (legal documents) while keeping the original spelling in brackets afterwards, if possible. In future it could be useful to create an application which would automate the process of translating Russian proper nouns into Estonian.