TOWARDS THE ISSUE OF TRANSLATING PROPER NAMES
(ON THE MATERIALS OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE)

Nurken Aubakir¹, Velinur Makhpirov²

¹PhD student, M.A., Kazakh Ablai Khan University of International Relations and World Languages, KAZAKHSTAN, nurkenaubakir@gmail.com
²Professor, Doctor of philological sciences, Kazakh Ablai Khan University of International Relations and World Languages, KAZAKHSTAN, velinur@mail.ru

Abstract

The issue of proper names is generating considerable interest in terms of translation studies. It has not yet been established whether to translate them or leave them untranslated. Thus, this paper seeks to address how to solve the problem of proper names translation as a part of culture-specific items.  The main objective of the article is to comprehensively investigate the ways of translating names of people, geographical locations, organizations, terms, buildings, toponyms, people’s titles, and current strategies applied by translators in popular science discourse. In this context, the article examines the types of translation transformations and methods of both Western and Eastern scholars, representation of transmitting of proper names from English to Kazakh, the best ways of proper names translation complying with the rules of Kazakh language. We believe that we have designed an innovative solution to these issues. We came to the conclusion that proper names are meaningful and able to convey hidden information, which in turn cannot be understood without profound cultural awareness, as well as this form of culture-specific items should be rendered into the target language by using both linguistic and cultural knowledge.  The scientific research was based on the materials of National Geographic (USA) in English language and National Geographic Qazaqstan in the Kazakh language.

Keywords: proper names, strategies, popular science discourse, Culture-Specific Items, translation