The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale as an Object of Translation: Variability, Pragmatics, Adaptation

The article presents the results of the analysis of Russian translations of the original Brothers Grimm’s tale "Der alte Großvater und der Enkel" (The old man and his grandson, 1812). The analysis involves interlanguage translations of different time periods and various translators - V. A. Gatsuk (1893), P. N. Polevoy (1893), and Y. Polishchuk (2023), as well as an arrangement of a fairy tale in the form of a fable by L. Tolstoy (1896), and an intersemiotic translation in the form of a short film "Plastic Cup" (2019). The multi-genre empirical material allowed us to consider the problems of translating fairy-tales from the perpective of linguistic and cultural adaptation, localization, and variability. The aim of the research is to identify similarities and differences of translation solutions at the level of language means selection according to four criteria. 1) the transfer of content and plot; 2) transfer of author's style; 3) compliance to the stylistic pattern of Russian fairy tales; 4) synonymic variability of translation solutions. General scientific methods are used for comparative analysis in the work. The novelty of the research lies in the definition of dominant translation strategies, conditioned both by the traditions and trends of literary translation in different periods, and by the individual characteristics of certain translators. It was concluded, that the early translations were made in line with domestication and adaptation of fairy-tales to the perception familiar to the Russian-speaking audience, the later translations are focused on transmitting the author's idea as close as possible to the original. Intersemiotic translation as a polycode audiovisual product allowed us to conclude about localization and transcreation strategy in translation. Based on a comprehensive analysis of empirical material, it was possible to outline a new vector of translation studies of fairy-tales and thereby complement the paradigm of works on the analysis of translations of the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales. In the future it is planned to consider the features of machine translation and translation with the use of artificial intelligence to determine the limits of transmission of different types of information in the fairy tale text by means of the target language. 

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