KING SILVAN, DUKE HARALD, BARBARIAN HAG AND OTHER PUSHKIN’S CHARACTERS
The semantics of the proper name in literary text is richer than the semantics of the proper name in language. For this reason, it is not always possible to limit oneself to recreation of the phonographic shell of a proper name in the translation of literary texts. In literary text, character names can be etymologised. This implies foregrounding of the inner form of a proper name as well as secondary etymologising when the meaning that is not initially characteristic of a certain name is attributed to it. Moreover, such etymologisation, as a matter of fact, can take place in the actual text of translation. Recreation of character names of a literary text in translation requires individual decisions of the translator on each particular text and each particular name. In this respect, the translator’s task is also to maintain awareness of connotations related to proper names. The article explores recreation of several character names from the works by A. Pushkin ( Saltan, Gvidon, Chernomor, Lel, Babariha, Ruslan ) in German and Latvian translations performed at different times and by different translators who kept to the modification method of translation, i.e., the character names they used were different from those of the original. Apart from that, the article analyses which connotations of the original it proved possible to preserve, which were lost, or, on the contrary, added to the text of translation.