Culturally Specific Elements in Russian Translations of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Abstract

This comparative corpus analysis is based on ten twentieth-century Russian translations of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The concept of acknowledging different cultural needs in translating is at the centre of this study, which addresses the questions of how the translators approached the English text, how they selected culturally acceptable equivalents for their translations, and how they adapted or changed these equivalents in seeking to produce meanings and effects they found in their source. Overall the translators use similar strategies, but their treatment varies according to what kind of cultural specifics are in question, and they take different approaches to what could be called the choice between ‘the Russian Alice’ and ‘the Victorian British Alice’. Trends can also be observed over time, so that, for example, foreignizing translations are a later tendency.