Linguocultural features of anthroponyms in translation (on the example of “Baburnama”)

Ma’mura Sultanovna Mustafokulova

By: Ma’mura Sultanovna Mustafokulova

**Abstract. **The thesis deals with the linguocultural features of anthroponyms in the English translations of “Baburnama”. It describes the structure of the Turkic-Islamic name, the role of titles and “speaking” names, and the strategies and problems of transliteration.

**Key words: **anthroponym, linguoculturology, translation, transliteration, Baburnama, titles.

A student prepares a seminar on Central Asian history and puts three books on her desk: two English translations and the Uzbek text of “Baburnama”. On the first page she meets the author as Baber, Babur and Bobur, and his father as Omar Sheikh and Umarshayx. For a moment she is not sure that the books are about the same people. This small scene shows that a personal name is the first thing a reader meets in a historical text, and the way it is written decides whether the reader feels at home or lost.

The full name in the Turkic-Islamic tradition differs from the English pattern “first name + surname”. It may include a personal name (ism), an honorific (laqab), the name of the father or ancestor and, for poets, a pen-name (taxallus). The author of the memoirs is known as Zahiriddin Muhammad Bobur: Zahiriddin is an Arabic honorific, Muhammad is the religious name, and Bobur is usually connected with the word “tiger”. All English translators use the short form Babur (or the older Baber), but the full form remains in introductions and genealogical tables.

Names in “Baburnama” are almost always accompanied by titles such as Mirzo, Xon, Sulton, Begim and Xonim, which show rank, gender and family relations. Translators usually keep them (Umar Shaikh Mirza, Qutlugh Nigar Khanim) and explain them once, because no English word has the same cultural volume. Many names are “speaking”: Qutlug‘ Nigor combines “blessed” and “beloved”, Humoyun means “august, fortunate”. The usual strategy is transliteration with an explanation in a note or glossary; a literal translation such as “Blessed Beauty” would make a historical person sound like a character of a fairy tale.

The greatest practical problem is variability: Husain, Husayn, Hussain; Shaibani, Shaybani; Qutlugh, Kutluk. It is caused by the sounds of Turkic and Arabic origin which English does not have, by the Arabic script without short vowels and by the change of alphabets in Uzbek. In real life this confuses students in seminars and visitors at historical sites, who ask why the same man is Bobur on one sign and Babur in a guidebook. A good solution is a single transliteration system used consistently, a short explanation of titles and an index of names with variants. Thus the translation of anthroponyms is not a mechanical copying but a way of keeping the cultural memory of the text understandable for a new reader

Ma’mura Sultanovna Mustafokulova

2nd-year Master’s student (group MA/XTA 25-2)

Foreign Language and Literature

University of Exact and Social Sciences

Uzbekistan

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