THE POETICS OF FAIRY-TALE TRANSFORMATIONS IN HOVHANNES TOUMANIAN’S TRANSLATIONS

Abstract

Hovhannes Toumanian is widely known not only as Armenia’s national poet and a remarkable fairy tale writer but also as a brilliant translator of German, Russian, Japanese, Irish, and Italian fairy tales. Most of Toumanian’s translations, except those of the Russian tales, are mediated interpretations. However, indirect translations are not uncommon in the history of fairy tales. We have attempted to identify several patterns underlying the linguistic transformations in the texts translated by the poet. The distribution of the main transformations depends on the fact that individual elements of the fairy tale are more susceptible to change when moving from one linguaculture to another. These are the initial and final formulas, titles of fairy tales, names of protagonists, names of supernatural beings, etc.