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THE FIRST FAIRY TALE (“PRINCESS AT THE BALL”) BY FRANTISEK HRUBIN AS INTERPRETATION OF MIKHAIL LANDMAN: ABOUT THE SPECIFICS OF TRANSLATING CZECH CHILDREN POETRY TO THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2017. Issue 2 (179). P. 97-101

The aim of this work is to discuss some specifics of translating Czech children poetry to the Russian language. For the analysis were chosen the poem called “První pohádka (Princeznička na bále)” (The First Fairy Tale; Princess at the Ball), written by well-known Czech poet Frantisek Hrubin, and its translation “Принцесса кораллы свои потеряла” (The Princess Who Lost Her Beads) by Mikhail Landman. The analysis exposed the specifics of the translation such as: more phraseological and idiomatic expressions than in the original poem and more developed and concrete description of the places and characters. More specific descriptions of the places could lead to activation of imagination in child mind. The increase of phraseological and idiomatic expressions is justified by the adaptation of the Czech poem into the structure of traditional Russian national literature. The name of the Czech protagonist “Honzik” corresponding to the Russian Ivanushka-Durachok and the basic ironic modality of the poem were not altered in the translation. The translator may have left the original names for one of two reasons: either to avoid the necessity of changing the names of other characters, leading to a monolingual structure of the translation, or to create an opportunity for the Czech names to obtain new associations of their own in the Russian language. The ironic undertone of the poem’s finale is kept in the translation but it is presented by different means.

Keywords: Czech-Russian literature connections, children’s poetry, literary translation, F. Hrubin, M. Landman