Semantic Difficulties Encountered in the Process of Translating Literary Texts Titles

Abstract

The study stresses the importance of literary translation that is probably one of the most challenging types of translation because there are no or rare specialized words and terms for which dictionaries have exact equivalents.

In comparison with the scientific text, the literary text is full of emotions, feelings and colour. In addition, vocabulary reflects to a greater or lesser degree the author ́s personal evaluation of things or phenomena. Therefore, literary translation requires some competences and creativity.

The research offers a number of approaches to literary texts titles and presents the importance of rendering them accurately. It also outlines our goal to draw translators’ attention to the title, which is many times neglected and considered unimportant.

Besides, literary texts titles require a special attention, as they do not only represent a name, which stays at the top of the page or at the first page of a book that is firstly judged by its cover and its title. They are a unique and entire world. That is why the translator shall firstly decode what is encoded in the original title and then in the same way to carefully encode the message into its translation that is to remain faithful to the work it entitles.