Domestication and Foreignization in Russian Translations of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

• In chapter 2 of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Alice tries to talk to a Mouse, but does not receive an answer: "'Perhaps it doesn't understand English,' thought Alice. 'I dare say it's a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror.'". Accordingly, Alice addresses the Mouse in French: "Où est ma chatte?". Russian translators of Alice have translated this sequence in different ways – for example, in Vladimir Nabokov's translation (1923), which is often considered a typical example of a domesticated translation, the Mouse does not understand Russian. The mouse is probably French and the reason that it is in the same place as Anya (Alice) might be that it has stayed behind (in Russia?) after the retreat of Napoleon (in the 1812 war between France and Russia), and Alice speaks to the Mouse in French: "Ou est ma chatte?". On the basis of an analysis of examples of Russian and other translations, the present contribution will try to problematize the concepts domestication and foreignization, applying them not only to the translation of "domestic" source text elements, but also to source text elements that can be seen as "foreign".

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Studier av enskilda språk (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- Specific Languages (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

translation

foreignisation

domestication

Russian language

Ryska språket

English language

Engelska språket

slaviska språk

Slavic Languages

Linguistics

lingvistik

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kap (ämneskategori)