TRANSLATED FAIRY TALES AND THEIR READERSHIP(S) Cover Image

DE LA TRADUCTION DES CONTES ET DE LEUR(S) PUBLIC(S)
TRANSLATED FAIRY TALES AND THEIR READERSHIP(S)

Author(s): Alina Pelea
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai
Keywords: fairy tales; translation; culture; skopos.

Summary/Abstract: Translated Fairy Tales and Their Readership(s). By definition, fairy tales address both children and adults and that makes the issue of the addressees of translations more pressing than in the case of other literary genres. Our research starts from the assumption that the translator’s strategy is inevitably influenced by his choice of the addressees and illustrates by three cases in point the difficulties the translator encounters when he/she wants to translate a fairy tale for both children and adults. The available corpus of translated tales from Romanian into French and from French into Romanian not only supports our assumption, but also seems to indicate that the choice of the target readership may be due, to a certain extent, to the asymmetrical relationship between the two cultures. Thus, the French translations of Creangă’s and Ispirescu’s tales into French almost all (there is only one exception) have the necessary features for satisfying an adult audience, while the Romanian translations of Perrault’s tales all address, most of the times explicitly and exclusively, children, while only a few attempt to reach the adult readership too.

  • Issue Year: 53/2008
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 29-37
  • Page Count: 9
  • Language: French