Translating Jedi and Sith. Proper names in early translations of Star Wars novels to German, Polish and Russian
Translating Jedi and Sith. Proper names in early translations of Star Wars novels to German, Polish and Russian

Summary/Abstract: The presented paper argues the importance of proper names in fantasy and science fiction in general, but focuses primarily on the highly successful Star Wars franchise. Worldwide popularity of George Lucas’ creation resulted in the need for translation of Star Wars materials to other languages. Translators were given a task, among others, of creating a glossary of proper names essential to the overall story, such as Jedi and Sith. This paper is an analysis of translation of these proper names in Star Wars novels released before the year 2000 in German (61), Polish (41) and Russian (19). It presents all variants proposed by the translators before the final one was canonized and comments on their choices and strategies used. The analysis shows that while German and Polish translators usually retained use of previously established versions, Russian translators proved to be less consistent in this matter.

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