Translating Folklore: the Myth of Baba Jaga in Afanasev’s Fairy Tales

Abstract

The main aim of this article is to provide a thorough insight about the difficulties encountered when translating fairy tales from Slavic folklore, in a sense that not only it implies the shift from anoral version to a written one, but also it has to face all the challenges of children’s literature. In order to do this, we have analyzed one of the hundreds of fairy tales present in the work of the Russian writer and linguist Aleksandr Nikolaevič Afanas’ev, Narodnye russkie skazki, an extraordinary collection and classification of a large amount of fairy tales of the Slavic oral culture. Our analysis focuses on the well-known character Baba Jaga, the ‘wooden leg’ witch, who lives in an izbaand rests on hen’s legs in an enchanted wood. In particular, an attempt is made to conduct a translatological analysis of Afanas’ev’s text, within the framework of textual typology considering the translation macro-strategy, the most significant linguistic factors, as well assome potential translation strategies which help the story to fit in the target language and culture in the best possible way.