Prevođenje elemenata indijanske kulture u romanu Devojčica sa ostrva duhova Luiz Erdrič
Words from Native American Culture in Louise Erdrich's the Birchbark House

Summary/Abstract: Translators face a difficult challenge when it comes to translating literary works that can be viewed as translations. Multicultural literature is such in its nature – it includes literary texts that originate from two different cultures and are written in two different languages simultaneously. Writers of multicultural literature are either immigrants or indigenous people that have been colonized, and are considered to be ethnic minorities in the dominant society. These writers usually write in the dominant language, but also include words, phrases and entire sentences in their mother tongues for the purpose of portraying a unique cultural heritage. These encoded messages represent a challenge for the readers, but also for translators who don't speak the language but somehow have to translate the cultural nuances into the target languages. These issues permeate Native American literary productions. Louise Erdrich in The Birchbark House, written in English, portrays the culture, customs and beliefs of her people, the Ojibwe, by using words and phrases from the Ojibwe language. This paper analyzes the translation of The Birchbark House into Serbian by Aleksandra Grubor. The paper focuses specifically on the strategies the translator uses to translate the words and phrases from the Ojibwe language into Serbian, but also the strategies she uses to translate the words and phrases given in English that are culturally marked by the Ojibwe heritage.

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