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Names and Their Substitutes

1991; John Benjamins Publishing Company; Volume: 3; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1075/target.3.2.04emb

1569-9986

Sheila Embleton,

Natural Language Processing Techniques

Abstract The Astérix comic-book series, originally in French, is well-known and widely translated. Each book relates an adventurous episode in which the principal character is Astérix, a small, witty warrior from a fictional Gaulish village, the only village to have successfully resisted the Roman occupation. The series relies on many humorous techniques, but word-play and puns form an integral part. Much humour derives from the names used, combining various comic effects, particularly puns and double entendres. Thus the translator faces not only the usual problems in translating literary names, but also the problem of retaining these comic effects. This paper examines these problems and their solutions, based on a complete collection of name data from all 30 books in 4 languages (French original; English, German, Finnish translations), with numerous references to translations into other languages.