News
18/02/2025. Foreign/Own: Foxex and Translations
February 18, 202:
The participants in the Foreign/Own project got aquainted with the history of Russian-Chinese translations and translated Chinese fairy-tales into the Karelian language.
As the first translators in the history of Russian-Chineese relationships, the participants worked with texts in the intermediary language – Russian. They learned about the difficulties and challenges that translators have faced at different times, gained an understanding of modern works and the intricacies of their translation, examined examples from texts and became familiar with the editions of Chinese translated books presented in the National Library of Karelia.
Three Chinese fairy tales united by a common character – a fox – were proposed as texts for reading, discussion and translation into Karelian. Two of the tales are folk tales, and the third was written by the Chinese writer Pu Songling and is included in the Strange Tales from Liaozhai collection. In this work, the main character is a werewolf-fox, unusual for the Russian readers, but widespread in Chinese culture. The participants of the program compared the images of the fox in Russian and Chinese fairy tales, discussed the differences in the perception of the character and the subtleties of transferring the text into the Karelian language.
It should be added that the choice of materials and themes of the program is timed to coincide with the Cross-Cultural Years of Russia and China in 2024-2025. Patrons of the National Library have the opportunity to get acquainted with both classical works and modern novels by popular Chinese writers translated into Russian. For those interested in learning Chinese, the Department of Literature in Foreign Languages offers a large selection of self-study guides and teaching aids, books adapted for reading in Chinese.
