Names of colours in literary translation: the case of translation of Elfriede Jelinek’s wir sind lockvögel baby! into Polish

Abstract

This paper presents the issue of translation of names of colours in literature. They perform very important functions as they refer to the non-verbal world and have to evoke specific images in the readers’ imagination. Furthermore, they often have a symbolic meaning and are related to the phraseology of a given language. Considering linguistic and cultural differences in colour names one may assume that these differences in the original and translated texts are inevitable. The paper presents the results of the analysis of the translation of colour names in Elfriede Jelinek’s novel wir sind lockvögel baby! into Polish. The aim of the study was to identify translation techniques and the factors that affect the translator’s decisions. In the analysis, a list of colour terms used and their Polish equivalents was developed along with their context. Subsequently, their lexical meanings were compared, and their dictionary definitions, morphological structure, references to the speakers and the context of use were investigated. The comparison was made in order to establish how particular items were translated and whether a given method could be validated. The analysis demonstrated that the following techniques for translating names of colours were distinguished: accepted equivalent, accepted equivalent with modification, change of reference, change of shade, specification, specification with modification, hyperonym, hyperonym with modification and reduction. Factors that determine the use of a given technique are language differences and the convention for naming colours in the languages concerned, the context and the translators themselves.