French Fairy Tales by Marko Vovchok and Mykola Tereshchenko’s Translation Strategy

Intercultural Mediation

Abstract

The French-language heritage of Marko Vovchok remains understudied, particularly with regard to its translation analysis, which underlines the relevance and topicality of this article. This study analyses Mykola Tereshchenko’s Ukrainian translations of Vovchok’s French fairy tales, aiming to identify the characteristics of his translation strategy. For this purpose, the interpretive theory of translation (Seleskovitch & Lederer 1984), Berman’s concept of “deforming tendencies” (1984), and Venuti’s strategies (1995) were applied. The qualitative analysis is based on a comparative study of source and target texts. The results of this research demonstrate that a translator succeeded in achieving a balance in rendering original Vovchok’s idiostyle. The study has proved that the dominant translation strategy was domestication which, as a form of adaptation, inevitably involves the application of lexical and stylistic transformations. This is particularly noticeable when reproducing culturally marked elements, such as character names, realia, phraseological units, and folklore motifs. To implement the chosen strategy and to convey the emotive, expressive, and stylistic colouring of the fairy tales, also called children’s literature, the translator mostly employed the following techniques: modulation, concretisation, generalisation, cultural correspondence, explication, metaphorical preservation, remetaphorisation, functional adaptation. The investigation also revealed the occurrence of several of Berman’s “deforming tendencies”, such as rationalisation, clarification, expansion, and qualitative impoverishment. These findings indicate that Tereshchenko’s translation strategies contribute to intercultural mediation, bridging the French originals and the Ukrainian readership. Future research could involve a comparative analysis of other translations of Vovchok’s French prose.