Which Hollow is Witches’ Hollow? An Empirical Study on Translating Toponyms

Piotr Andrzej Wesołowski

Abstract


Proper names—especially the telling ones—can play a vital role in portraying characters and settings in works of fiction. Their capacity to carry both literal and connotational meanings makes them excellent devices for both designing readers’ emotions and cueing them. Nevertheless, there is no consensus on their treatment of choice in translation, which informed a more detailed and in-depth approach aiming to empirically identify the differences resulting from various approaches to translating proper names. The paper explores the differences between two types of translation—domestication vs. foreignization—of a toponym from Lovecraftian horror fiction. The data were collected from native speakers of Polish (Npl=514) and English (Nen=81) by means of the Binary Dimensions Matrix—a custom-made inventory devised to capture differences in connotational meaning. The analyses found significant connotational divergence between the foreignized and domesticated translations on 12 out of 41 dimensions and confirmed the occurrence of the divergence on 9 out of 9 hypothesized horror-related dimensions. The comparison of the results with the data from the English-speaking group revealed that although the significant differences yielded by foreignization (as compared to domestication) were fewer in number, they were also greater in strength. The results show that—at least for horror fiction and English–Polish translation—foreignization may enhance the ‘horrific’ experience even beyond that of the source-language audience, suggesting that ‘translation loss’ is a two-fold phenomenon that is to be considered on qualitative and quantitative levels alike. However, further research is required to refine translation strategies for emotionally evocative literature across different genres and languacultures.


Keywords


proper names; translation; reception; horror fiction; foreignization and domestication

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/gema-2025-2502-05

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