Talk:The Outpost (Prus novel)

Surname translation
... is nonsense. So writing about Dickens in Polish, you would say he's the author of David Copperfield (Miedziane Pole) and Oliver Twist (Skręt) ?? Jotel 14:41, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

... is sometimes useful, even necessary. Characters' names are sometimes chosen to suggest distinctive traits. Ignacy Krasicki's novel, Mikołaja Doświadczyńskiego przypadki, has appeared in English as The Adventures of Nicholas Wisdom.

The English translator of Henryk Sienkiewicz's Charcoal Sketches (Szkice węglem) has rendered the characters' names with English equivalents — e.g., "Zołzikiewicz" as "Scrofula."

This would be still more necessary in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, with its emblematically named characters — "Christian," "Evangelist," "Help," "Mr. Worldly Wiseman," "Mr. Legality," his son "Civility," etc.

In his Polish translation of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky, Robert Stiller has translated "Jabberwock" as "Żabrołak."

In the English translation of Bolesław Prus' novel, Pharaoh, "Psujak" (chapter 48) is rendered as "Rascal."

Ślimak's name, in Prus' The Outpost, is suggestive of this peasant's plodding, stolid nature — and, perhaps, of his vulnerability. And while I would not translate his name within the text of the novel, I see no reason not to make the Anglophone reader aware of the name's connotations in a foreword or footnote. That is essentially what I was doing when, in the "Outpost" article, I provided an English rendering of "Ślimak" parenthetically as "Snail."

Nihil novi 01:40, 15 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Ok, so go ahead and edit the Goethe article: Faust (Fist) --Jotel 05:45, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
 * J.L., I'll leave that to you. I'll stick with Ślimak and Robak.  Nihil novi 06:05, 15 June 2007 (UTC)