Publication details
Personaggi fiabeschi come un fenomeno culturale in traduzione
| Title in English | Fairy tale characters as a cultural phenomena in translation |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2013 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Lingue, culture, letterature tra geografia e storia |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Linguistics |
| Keywords | fairy tale characters; translation; cultural transfer |
| Description | The anthropologic and ethnologic studies have proven that in the European cultural space some fairy tale motives and characters have been subjected to a cultural exchange. Therefore we can find characters from antique mythology coexisting with those of northern mythology, both changed and overwritten by the superstrate of Christian symbolism. Despite the modern cosmopolitism of the so called classical fairy tales, even today many cultures preserve particular and unique traits of their characters, traits that were influenced by cultural, social and religious specifics. These characters are a result of a century-long development. Out of the field of ethnology and folkloristic studies there is only a little interest for the characters and their translation. The analytic studies of fairy tales such as Propp's Morphology of Fairy Tales focus on the description of the basic narrative motives and their interest for the characters is limited on one hand to establishing their relationship with the leading character (e.i. if they are portrayed as his helper or adversary etc.), on the other hand to classifying the actions that the characters are subdued to. The contemporary translation studies don't consider the translation if children's literature, of which the fairy tales are part, a problematic worth particular attention also because of the marginal position of the children's literature in many literary systems. They also pay very little attention to the translation of fairy tale characters justifying it by their universal nature. The article focuses on the possibilities of adequate translation of the concepts of the fairy tale characters with all of their various connotations into a language where the said character doesn't exist or its connotation is different from the source language. |