Imageryin Translation

on the Hill inland from Newcastle upon Tyne, though in the fairy­tale it acquires a magic function of a haunted place. If we imitate the semantics of the name in Russian, it will come out something like Корова из Хедли, which is not quite comprehensible for a cow is only one of the possible shapes of the boggle in the story. The translator found an intermediary way by adding the idea of bogy to the name: Коровий Оборотень. Transformation takes place in the tale, and there is something of a cow in it. Yet the local touch of Hedley, the imitation of reality, is lost with such a name in Russian.

Symbols of the sacred. A symbol is an important part of the mnemonic techniques in a folklore text, and it varies from nation to nation. The translation problem may not be the symbol itself but the symbolic function as such. One and the same word may play a symbolic role in one culture and lack a symbolic pow­er in another. Unlike such simple symbols as a ring, a flower, a tree, a mountain, and so on, there exist symbols that are known to the source culture and sound meaningless or strange to the target one, like the Russian «избушка на курьих ножках», the abode of Baba-Yaga, indeed any abode in the dark magic forest, and a symbol of supernatural, evil forces. In Russian, it is a mnemonic formula, readily recognisable as referring to the world of dark forest power, a passage to the realm of the dead. Nobody really recognises such a dread symbol in the "hut on chicken legs," which seems so very strange in English that many translators try to use something different, like "a cabin on rooster legs" or "a small hut on hen's legs," etc. It is not without reason that in English editi­ons of Russian fairy tales one can find many strange pictures of the "hut on chicken's legs" that differ greatly from this symbol in the perception of a Russian. Thus, a Russian symbol of the gate­way to the other world becomes enigmatic in English, while it loses its powerfal symbolic function; actually, it is mainly per­ceived as a "gateway to the Russian fairy tale;" In attempts to convert the Russian formula of Baba Yaga's abode into a Europe­an symbol, "the chicken legs" usually disappear and give way to

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Практикум по художественному переводу

just "a strange little hut." The word "strange" plays the role of a symbol in this formula. But then the Russian tale is inevitably replaced by an English fairy story.

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