The Treatment of Proper Names in the Translation of “Viaje al Oeste”: A Quantitative-Qualitative Study

Abstract

Journey to the West is one of the classical Chinese literatures and the most translated works. This study compares two translations of this book in Spanish. It focuses on translating proper names, which encompass the names of the Dharma, alias, and those of religious deities. The research is framed within the translation of literary studies, and it takes both a quantitative and qualitative approach. We have chosen the software R and AntConc to extract and process the quantitative data. Variables related to lexical diversity are analyzed and the specific translational techniques used by both translations have been compared. The results indicate that both translations have common and different characteristics. In addition, various translation strategies are adopted depending on the characteristics of the names. Transliteration, amplification, literal translation, or a combination of the strategies are the commonly used methods.