Translating Proper Nouns

Singapore is a developed capitalist country,known as one of the “Four Tigers of Asia”.At the same time,by virtue of its geographical advantages,Singapore has become one of the important financial,service and shipping centers in Asia.The book Singapore: Wealth,Power and the Culture of Control shows readers how Singapore has progressed from colonial status to one of Asia’s economic powerhouses in 40 years.This report is based on the English-Chinese translation exercise of The development of Singapore’s colonial economy,Chapter 1 of Singapore: Wealth,Power and the Culture of Control.In this chapter,Singapore developed from a Southeast Asian product distribution center on Riau Island to a marketplace for both guns and drugs in the British Empire.As soon as Singapore was founded,it became an important entrepot for East-West trade.In more than a century,there have been many important figures and events that have pushed Singapore’s history forward.Therefore,proper nouns appear frequently.Translation is a process of reproducing the original information and style for the target readers.The translator takes the translation of proper nouns such as names,toponyms and culture-loaded words as examples to study the translation of proper nouns in historical documentary texts and summarize the translation experience.As this book mainly tells the story of Singapore’s economic rise and social culture,a large number of proper nouns are mainly place names in Southeast Asia,names of historical figures,names of wars,names of enterprises that process or sell local resources in Singapore,and colonial terms.These names contain Singapore’s unique multi-ethnic history.For example,the names in various languages include the colonists of European countries led by the British,the power of the Temenggong and the Sultan in Southeast Asia,and the overseas Chinese who made a living and built up huge business groups in Southeast Asia.Accurate translation of these terms will not only help readers reproduce the social landscape of Singapore at that time,but also provide new material sources for history lovers and researchers.For names of people,place names and company names,translators mainly follow the principle of “Ming Cong Zhuren” and “conventionalization”,and try to choose the translated names provided by authoritative organizations and the translated versions with a certain degree of dissemination.For group names and position names evolved from Chinese dialects,the translator combined transliteration and free translation to find the corresponding words in Chinese.For the colonial terms unfamiliar to readers,the translator chose the way of annotation to provide readers with certain historical information support and help readers better understand the full text.In China,some authoritative organizations have published relevant books to provide official translations of names of people and places,but there are still a variety of translations on the Internet that can confuse readers,and mistranslated enterprise names will cause unnecessary economic disputes.Therefore,the translation of proper nouns still needs consensus and joint maintenance.