News
21/10/2026. Foreign/Own: Pinocchio, Buratino and the Karelian language
October 20, 2026:
The first meeting of the new season of the Foreign/Own project was dedicated to a comparison of original foreign fairy-tale novels and their literary adaptations into Russian.
Project participants were asked to read in advance Pinocchio by C. Collodi and The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Buratino by A. Tolstoy for subsequent discussion and translation of text fragments into the Karelian language. Through this pair of books, one can trace how a translation evolved into an independent work of Russian literature.
The other examples of literary adaptations presented to the participants were The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. F. Baum and The Wizard of the Emerald City by A. Volkov, Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting and Aibolit by K. Chukovsky. The participants learned that the Russian versions of these fairy tales share a common trait: all three were initially conceived merely as translations. However, upon engaging with the original texts, Russian writers came to realize the need to adapt the foreign ideas and plots – effectively accepting a "challenge of inspiration." This is how the fairy tales that have been cherished by many generations of our readers came into being.
During the second part of the program, the participants shared their expressions about two read texts, discussed differences between the original and Russian versions, and their own translations into the Livvi-Karelian. With editorial support of Tatyana Baranova, teacher, translator and native speaker of Karelian, the participants prepared translations of two chapters of the fairy-tale novel The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Buratino by A. Tolstoy.
Books about translation and works that were discussed on the program can be found in the collection of the National Library of Karelia.
