Translation peculiarities of anthroponyms in the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien "The Lord of the Rings"

The author discusses the peculiarities of translating proper names in J.R.R. Tolkien's novel "The Lord of the Rings." The relevance of the study is determined by the increased interest in the issues of translating proper names in literary works, particularly in the fantasy genre. The fantasy genre has its own specificities, where proper names must facilitate the reader's immersion in the "secondary" world through their semantic content, which the translator must convey skillfully. The material for the study consisted of a sample based on the epic novel "The Lord of the Rings" and included 50 proper names, as well as their adaptation in four different translations (by N.V. Grigorieva and V.I. Grushetsky, A.A. Gruzberg, A.A. Kistyakovsky and V.S. Muravyev, and also the translation by V.A. Matorina). The methodological basis of the study included the works of the following authors: V.D. Bondaletov, D.I. Yermolovich, A.V. Superanskaya, T.V. Shmeleva, and others. The methods of research included analysis and synthesis, comparative analysis, descriptive analysis, and component analysis. The conducted analysis showed that the most common technique for translating proper names is the analogous translation, and translators often deviated from the author’s advice and intentions to create names that would be understandable and relatable to a Russian reader, which often led to a loss of the work's originality and the embedded characteristics of the characters. When translating proper names that are not meant to be translated, translators most often used techniques such as transcription, transliteration, and their combination; however, there were also cases of applying analogous translation. It should be noted that several translations contain errors made during the transcription of proper names, some of which are presumably related to the fact that the names were unfamiliar to the translators, and at the time of the translation's release, there was no official reading of them.