How can you translate the magic of fairy tales? | Grimm linguistics
Description
Once upon a time, Christina and Dominic embarked on a linguistic adventure through the enchanted world of fairy tales to explore the rich history, dark origins, and global legacy of the Brothers Grimm – and what it means to translate their magical style. In this whimsical episode, Christina and Dominic wander deep into the woods of Grimms’ Fairy Tales to talk about the linguistic magic thatbrings them to life.
- Who really wrote the most famous fairy tales?
- How do we translate a story and still keep its essence?
- Why are the original versions a little… darker than we remember?
- How can we measure the quality of a translation?
From enchanted animals and pumpkin carriages to UNESCO recognition and n-gram analysis, this episode blends folklore, philology, and a bit of fairy dust.
Full episode transcript available here:
Article mentioned in this episode:
Sanchez-Stockhammer, Christina. 2020. The potential of multi-word units as measures of fairy-tale style in Schneewittchen (Snow-White) and its English translations. In Ludwig Fesenmeier & Iva Novakova (eds.), Phraséologie et stylistique de la langue littéraire/Phraseology and stylistics of literary language, 305–327. Berlin: Peter Lang.
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