Because the two names appear so far from each other in the narrative, the connection between them might escape any reader. The name Nayden is mentioned just once and in passing, but it is immediately recognizable to Bulgarian readers as deriving from the archaic word for “found.” (Some Bulgarian readers might even be aware of an old-but apparently still occasionally employed-practice for the police or social services to register abandoned, nameless children under the proper name Nayden.) The contemporary adjective for “found,” by contrast, is at the root of the sobriquet Namereniya (literally, “the Found One”) under which the protagonist resurfaces in Chapter 7. Although quite subtle in the original as well, a connection-hinted at precisely through their names-exists between the character Nayden and his great-grandson (the novel’s protagonist), who is born under the name Manol in the first chapter, but eventually reappears under the nickname the Foundling in the seventh chapter. The name Nayden creates a different sort of difficulty.
It felt important, however, to retain the possibility for the Anglophone reader to make a connection between the fictional character of Iovana, who gives birth to the novel’s protagonist, and the real-life author, whose first name is just one syllable off and who “gives birth” to the narrative. The name Iovana, for example, would normally be transcribed as Yovana, as this corresponds to how it’s pronounced. The first challenge concerns rendering the proper names, which Iana Boukova often employs beyond their immediate face value, so they also perform deeper semantic and connotative work. Moreover, even this relatively short excerpt contains examples of some of the overarching challenges presented by the book as a whole and, by extension, offers a glimpse into the overall strategies I’ve adopted while translating the novel.
1 They include the nestling of stories within stories, the meandering and branching out of the narrative, and the cyclical repetition of motifs, images, or events that are similar but not identical. The following excerpt from Iana Boukova’s novel Traveling in the Direction of the Shadow comes from the novel’s first chapter, which is titled “Iovana, or The Birth of the Hero.” I chose this excerpt because it works well as a standalone piece (conveniently bookended by the two mentions of Iovana), but also because it demonstrates quite a few of the mechanisms that are at work across this complex, intricate, and compelling novel at large.
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