A Case Study of Character Names in Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist

A project on sound symbolism in translation was carried out within the framework of the billateral project. It was designed by Ruth E. Pogacar and Professor Timothy Pogacar. The research focused on the question of what happens to the sound symbolism (i.e. the notion that sounds convey meaning) of proper names of fictional characters in translation. Since some proper names of fictional characters in Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens may infer sypathetic or non-sympathetic traits about the individuals that carry these names, the research focused on the question of whether the sound symbolism of these names has the same effect on readers when these names occur in the translated text. An online questionnaire was distributed by Dr. Agnes Pisanski Peterlin and dr. Nike K. Pokorn to first-year BA students in the Department of Translation Studies at the University of Ljubljana. The results were then described in the article that is currently under review with a leading scholarly journal in the field.