O problemach w przekładzie fitonimów artystycznych na podstawie powieści „Der Schrecksenmeister” Waltera Moersa i jej tłumaczenia na język polski

The following article discusses the translation problems of a specific kind of lexical units, the phytonyms, which have been defined as the names given to various plants. The main concern are the translation possibilities of phytonyms in the German novel „Der Schrecksenmeister“ and its Polish rendition. The author conceives phytonyms as cultural units. The reason for such conception is inspired by the Eighteenth International Botanical Congress in Melbourne, which established a unified International Code of Botanical Nomenclature. In a non-literary context phytonyms have typically two different functions: they identify an object among other, similar objects and they play a semantic role, which is connected to the so-called semantic motivation (the term used by Prof. Pawłowski, see: Pawłowski 1974) and gives the information about some features of an object. In a literary context the functions of phytonyms are multiplied. Besides the two above-mentioned functions they can be used as allusions and play a connotative role, i.e. they evoke some associations, which influence the perception of the intentional objects in a literary text. According to their connotative role phytonyms can evoke associations concerning the form of a plant, its features, colour, smell and place of occurrence. Phytonyms can also create an illusion that the story of a literary text took place in the real world. The selection of an adequate translation technique to translate phytonyms depends on, on the one hand, an accurate interpretation of the source text, and on the other hand, on an accurate identification of function, which the phytonym has in the source text, and must be adapted to the requirements of translation invariance.