TRANSLATION AND MEANING: A CULTURAL- COGNITIVE ...

What generally holds true for the above cases is the fact that the
translation equivalents, when they exist, are rarely transparent. This means
that one has to have access to the visual image in order to be able to identify
the character behind the name.
3. Allusive names
These names represent an especially interesting group since they
function at the level of allusion. In their original version, they most often
allude to literary characters and works, and as such are sometimes very
difficult to translate or adapt into other languages.
The character of Scrooge McDuck is, due to its literary origin, quite
transparent to the English-speaking audience. Everyone knows about
Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and the character of the stingy millionaire,
Ebenezer Scrooge. In order to stress Scrooge McDuck’s dominant feature,
his creators gave him a ‘surname’ with the rather telling prefix Mc-,
alluding to the popular preconception of the Scottish people as being ‘frugal
with money’. However, such a rounded nominal characterization resulted in
an almost completely opaque name in its Serbian version. The name Deda
Baja/Baja Patak – ‘Grandpa Baja’ or ‘Baja Duck’ is somewhat ambiguous
since ‘Baja’ could be a slangy term of endearment, slightly more cordial
than a ‘chap’, or it could signify a person who thinks highly of himself, or
who is capable of doing difficult tasks. It seems that the only criterion for
choosing this solution is that most of the names of the characters from
Duckburg end in ‘a’ and rhyme in Serbian: Raja, Gaja, Vlaja, Caja, baba
Kaja. In Hungarian, the equivalent of Scrooge McDuck is Dagobert bácsi,
taken over from the German Onkel Dagobert/Dagobert Duck, where
‘Scrooge’, the heavily allusive part of the name, has been transposed as the
obsolescent male name ‘Dagobert’. In German, Scrooge McDuck is called
Onkel Dagobert/Dagobert Duck, where . Donald Duck’s nephews are Niki,
Viki and Tiki in Hungarian. Clearly, the only criterion for their adaptation in
this manner is that these hypocoristic forms rhyme. Similarly, the German
equivalents are also based on the effect achieved by rhyme: Tick, Trick and
Track.
Other examples of allusive names of this type can be found in some
minor characters from episodes with Donald Duck. Moby Duck and
Thursday are two of these. The Serbian translators chose to rely on the fact
that Melville’s and Defoe’s novels are universally known and that Mobi
Dak, which is the phonological adaptation of the name in Serbian, will be
transparent enough. The translators even chose to sacrifice the second part
of the name, or the ‘surname’, by not translating it the way they did with