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Article published In:
Translation and Interpreting Studies
Vol. 12:1 (2017) ► pp.137–161

Sound symbolism in translation

A case study of character names in Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist

 | University of Cincinnati
 | University of Ljubljana
 | University of Ljubljana
 | Bowling Green State University
Readers may infer that literary characters are sympathetic or unsympathetic based on the perceived phonetics of character names. Drawing on brand name literature in marketing, we investigate whether Slovene and English speakers can identify sympathetic and unsympathetic characters in Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist based solely on their names, despite being unfamiliar with the novel. Both Slovene and English speakers can make this distinction, suggesting that sound symbolism may help communicate Dickens’s intended characterizations. Dickens’s documented focus on creating meaningful names suggests the sound symbolism in his characters’ names is likely intentional. These findings are relevant to the translating convention of preserving proper names, which leaves spelling intact (given similar alphabets). Preserving the original names in translation may be justified for readers fluent enough to perceive the original name sounds. However, not altering character names in translation may sometimes lead to different phonetic perceptions, which alter the sound symbolic meaning.
Keywords: sound symbolism, Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, Slovene, proper names
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Sound symbolism
  • Proper names in translation studies
    • Charles Dickens’s character names in translation
    • Charles Dickens in Slovene translation
  • Method
    • Sympathetic characters
    • Unsympathetic characters
    • Ambiguous characters
  • Hypotheses
    • Vowels
    • Plosives
    • Fricatives
  • Study: Does sound symbolism influence readers’ perceptions of literary characters?
    • Participants
    • Procedure
  • Results
    • Analysis of individual character perceptions
    • Analysis of ratings based on character names
    • Analysis of ratings based on character type
    • Discussion
  • General discussion
    • Limitations and areas for future research
  • Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 13 April 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.12.1.07pog
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